Facing the Flood

The debris was blocking the road. 

When one thinks of spring there may be thoughts of flowers, green grass, green leaves budding on the tress, sunshine and the beginnings of bugs. One would not normally think water rising and rising, cottages, homes and structures being washed away. Roads covered with water and impassable. Families and home owners stranded and stuck in their homes due to being surrounded by water. Water in homes and cottages measuring by the foot rather than by inches.
The month of May is flood season in New Brunswick. We were fortunate to have an epic 100 year flood this year. The water has not risen to this level in close to 100 years. The rose to 7 meters in the lake area and in Fredericton the city I work in, it rose to 2008 level of 8.2 meters. It is difficult to understand how high that is I suppose. What happened to my house is the water reached the bottom basement windows and filled our basement with five feet of water. I am 5'6" so another six inches and it would have been at the top of my head. Yikes! The distance from the edge of the beach to my house is 55.5 meters. The water traveled that distance.

The flood started in the city and some residents were having to leave their homes due to water surrounding them. I had a friend who had to leave her apartment with 3 children under 4 years. The sewage was backing up into her building. At that point I was saying "it looks good here, the water is no where near us." The water would have been at least 30 meters away. That was on Monday. By that Friday we were getting nervous. The sump pump was working constantly to keep the water out of the house. I can tell you it is a strange feeling to be sleeping in a house where you know the water is slowly creeping up and surrounding you. It creates a fear in you knowing that the water is getting closer and closer to wiping out some of your precious belongings. I laid in bed for the next few nights wondering how I would move all of my things to safer ground.
Confession here, I am somewhat of a hoarder. Not in the sense of the show where there is barely space to move (although admittedly there was a narrow path from the stairs to the laundry room.) Ok so maybe in the sense of the show Hoarders. But really not as bad. I didn't have endless amounts of the same thing. I do have A LOT of clothes. Yeah OK alright I admit I have a problem. It was stuff from all of my fifty plus years as well as some belongings from my mom. She owned the house before me, I took it over. Because the house has only one bedroom and one closet, most of our belongings were in the basement.

By Sunday my husband and I knew we would have to move things to the upstairs. We then had to get what was most important. Some books, pictures, decorations, some craft supplies. I tried to move my crafts to the higher shelves hoping they would not get wet. Now my house looked like Hoarders because there were boxes all over the living room dining room area. We spent another day watching the water slowly rise closer to the house. By Tuesday the plan was for me to go to work and stay at my daughter's for a few days while my husband stayed at the house with the dog. If the power went out he would live off the generator. Off to work I went worrying about the water. Later in the day my husband called and said the water in the basement was getting close to three feet and the power would have to be turned off. Our electrical box is in the basement. The protocol is turn the power off if the water can reach the power box. He plan was to do the survivalist thing and live on the generator and hope for the best. I mentioned his plan to a co-worker and she was concerned about running the generator close to the house and causing carbon monoxide poisoning. Well that worried me too, so I told my boss I was leaving and went to rescue my husband from the flood.
When I got there he had the generator going, but there was something wrong with it. I convinced him to leave. He's big on survivalist stuff. He's into those Alaska Frontier shows.
We were fortunate to stay at my daughter's house. Her home has a spare room with a queen bed. She has two dogs so an extra one was not too much of a problem. So long as we kept the bandeau diaper on him because he can pee all over the house,
The next week and a half was spent watching the water levels and waiting for when we can go back to the house. We left the house on the 1st and returned on the 12th of May. Here is what we came back to. The sight was overwhelming to see.
One of the first shocks was seeing our neighbor's tree house in our yard. "What the heck is that!" I exclaimed.
"It's the neighbor's tree house!" replied my husband.

This is our neighbor's tree house. It was originally several feet away on the other side of our house. 

Looks like the shed is done. 

"Where are our tires?" we ask. We later found them throughout the woods.

The roots system from the erosion. 

"Look at the ground. I think the tree house was drug across the ground." says my husband almost in tears. He loves the yard and property.

Our neighbor's belongings dispersed through the woods. 

"Look his two sheds are gone. And his boat is over there, and his other stuff is all over the woods!" he goes on. 

This is part one of I don't know how many parts, My husband has been spending all week cleaning up the basement. The cleaning will be ongoing. I hope this will help to cure my hoarding. :)