Our first contact with flood waters came on Sunday. We were sitting in small group. Someone burst into the room asking for a wet vac. The preschool rooms (where they have nursery on Sundays) was flooding!! They had moved the children to a room at the other end of the hall. All I could think about was how unfortunate that the preschool kids might miss school the next day. It was raining HARD when we left the church. Evan had to go get the car and I had to shield Maddie from the rain. We had decided it was a good day to buy lunch out. When we pulled up to the restaurant they told us all they had was sweet tea to drink. We didn't mind and got our food to go. We got home and soon realized there was NO WATER! All the sudden we realized that this rain and flooding might be more serious than we had thought. I thought it a good idea to run out to Wal-mart to buy gallons of water before it was all gone. All I could think about was not knowing how I would feed Maddie her bottles!! I got to the store and literally had to stand in line to get into the isle with the water. All the sudden two fire men came into the isle and started loading up boxes of three gallon jugs of water. The water all over town had been shut off and they were there to bring water to the hospital. I remembered how thirsty I was after giving birth and my heart went out to women just wanting to enjoy their new babies. I hoped that things would be resolved soon. I purchased 12 gallons of water, half of it nursery water for Maddie and some for friends and family. I thought it a good idea to get some soup, bread, and milk!
On my drive home I was horrified to see that only 1/4 mile down from our house a family had a huge pool of dirty water covering their back yard. The water was about a foot from their back door...and it was still raining. I suddenly became very thankful that we lived on a hill. The rain continued all of Sunday and Monday. I decided to be brave and check under the house to see about the water heater. We didn't have water but neither did anyone else. This is what I found when I opened the door! Evan had gone down a few minutes before and all I heard was "Whoa!" when he opened the door...that couldn't be good!
You are looking at three feet of water...covering our crawl space and water heater!! Oy, what a mess. At least our home was more than livable! Some people had to evacuate and some even lost their homes or their possessions in the lower floors of their homes. School was canceled three days in a row! Water was back by Monday night but there was no water pressure. We were still flushing toilets with rain water...thankfully all we had to do was take a bucket to the basement! A good friend took the kids and I to her parents house where I was able to bathe them and fill three empty jugs with drinking water! I felt so filthy that I had taken a cold...very cold shower the night before. It isn't so bad if you lean your head forward and wash your hair upside down!! Finally, on Wednesday everything seemed to be back to normal. Tuesday and Wednesday were sunny days...as if nothing had happened! Thursday, schools were open and Eli went back to preschool. I drove through town to complete all the backed up errands and I didn't even see one puddle. Unimaginable after the events of the week. When I stepped outside on Tuesday the sun literally burned my eyes. I had wondered how Noah felt when he first put his foot on dirt after 40 days in a stinky boat! I wonder if he ever went sailing again.....
We have gotten most of the water out of the basement thanks to Evan's quick thinking. he ran a hose into the basement and let science take over. We now have to asses the damage. We reported our problem to the Emergency Management in Toccoa. They make a list of all damages in the city and present it to the government in order to get the declaration of "State of Emergency". The lady asked that we have an engineer come and check the foundation after having the crawl space under so much water for so long. Hopefully the people who suffered so much loss can get the aid that they need.
We have received so much encouragement and offers of help and hot water from people all over the community. Especially our church! People offering their expertise and hands to help clean up. What a blessing and a break to the stress of this week!
