I went to work at 3 today. Jim got home about 5:30. There had been another big storm today, thunder, torrential downpours, the usual.
When I came home for dinner, I noticed there were a bunch of leaves in a weird line along the front yard, and I thought perhaps they had been washed off the roof... or something. Didn't think anything about it.
Until.
Knock knock. The neighbor comes over and says, "Hey, your house was totally flooded today." Oh?
Oh. Apparently the lovely city of Salem storm drains (see my previous entry) again backed up. But this time, according to the neighbor, water came *shooting* out of manhole-cover-thingy in the middle of the street. The street that's slightly uphill from our house. And instead of just running down the road, it came woooshing into our yard. Washed out the bank by the driveway, filled up the garage (there was water pouring back out of the siding from within, the neighbor said). Dumped down into the yard, filled up along the fences, dumped through the vents & cracks & door & flooded the basement, filling it with mud & leaves. Our entire backyard was a lake, continually filling up.
A bunch of the neighbors all descended (wondering why Jim & I weren't home) on the house. They tore down another section of fence (see previous entry) so the water would woosh out of our yard & into the next-door yard. They drug a trench from our yard into theirs, channeling the water away from our house. Nice people, no? The guy said that he caught it all on his camcorder in case we need it for home insurance or to file a claim with the city.
We don't store anything on the floor of the basement, cuz it has a tendency to get wet anyway. But the garage? Filled with junk. D'oh. Mostly garage-type junk, tho, so hopefully most of it withstood being covered by water. We'll see tomorrow, in the daylight.
For now Brody has to be babysat when he goes outside so he doesn't escape out the gaping fence hole.
What a day...