Blog #7: The Storm
My Dad was scheduled to go on a book signing tour, before he left he mentioned that there were reports of a major storm coming. No one dared think what he meant by major! Not long after he left, my Mom and I were looking up and thinking “Hmm, it’s raining.” We didn’t think much of it at the time. Then the wind started to pick up. Still ok. Then trees started falling, and it started to get really bad. As the day went on it turned into a severe storm and finally, our power went out. Now it really was an emergency.
We quickly learned that we weren’t the only ones affected, there were power outages all over the city. We had to fend for ourselves. We didn’t panic.
We were getting ourselves sorted, finding flashlights and candles and then we heard water coming from the basement. It kind of sounded like the washing machine was going. We went downstairs and then we got a tiny bit worried about what we saw. Our basement was flooding quickly! Let me explain why. We have a sump pump, which normally pumps water out of our system to prevent flooding. However, it runs on electricity! So now water was flooding into the basement, and with all the extra rainwater, the water level was rising really fast.
It was all hands on deck, even though it was only two sets of hands. First we removed the rug, normally an easy task but given that it was water-logged even that was tricky. There was already an inch of water everywhere. Then we started bailing water into the nearby sink in the laundry room. We worked as fast as we could, but it wasn’t enough! We realized we had to come up with a better plan.
Luckily, our neighbour had a generator and was able to help us out of this predicament. The generator runs on gasoline, and if it ran out the water would start to flood in again. We managed, but it was a tough go for both of us.
We also realized what emergency plans we had in place already and what we had to think about for the future. Some good things, we had a lot of different sized batteries, a lot of flashlights and candles, safety matches and lighters. Our neighbour hooked us up with an extension cord that ran to a power bar in our house, so we could run a few things and charge our phones. Another great thing from our neighbour was the loan of a butane single-unit camp stove, so at least we could have a hot meal. We improvised where we had to and managed ok.
A really great idea is to do a few things for emergency preparedness. Keep up with maintenance on your house. Make sure you have a dedicated container with the appropriate supplies and everyone in the house knows where it is and what’s inside it. For example you could have a medium sized deck box with water, emergency food, candles, matches, batteries and flashlights.
It never hurts to be prepared!
