An 84 Day Journey

It’s been 84 days since the day that changed my life. Many people may suspect that it was the day I got engaged, my wedding day, or the day we booked our honeymoon…those were big days in this last year. But the day that I just cannot forget…at least for now…is April 18th. For most, this was just a horribly rainy day in the Chicagoland area. Traffic sucked. Perhaps they lost electricity or got some water in the basement and had to take that Friday off to clean up and toss out those unwanted bags of clothes or dusty broken Christmas decorations. For my husband and me, is was the day that we lost our home. At 5:30am we woke up to some noise in the basement. I assumed that it was the overworked sump pump. I was so very wrong. It was the cleaning supplies, laundry detergent, and a million other little things floating into walls. We had water…it was about 2 to 3 steps up. I called into work saying that I needed to stay home to clean up the mess. The secretary and I joked about needing a boat to get down the flooded street. If she provided the boat I could provide the cocktails. By 6:00am, there was no way I could have even left for work if I wanted to go. The water was so deep at the base of our driveway, that our cars’ tailpipes would have been snuffed out while we were trying to back up.

 I gave a little yawn and tried to convince my husband to come back to bed. There was nothing we could do until the rain stopped. He had other ideas. He put on his work boots and trekked out to see the river in our backyard. I was watching the news on the iPad. We had lost cable by this point. I saw several emergency crews on the street wading through the water. No one was giving us direction…no one was telling us to leave. In just a few minutes, my husband came back and said we needed to leave. I didn’t quite understand. Leave? What did he mean? Go where? We had no cars. He asked the emergency crew. They said the water would start coming over the levee in about an hour. My husband told them they were wrong…it was starting now. He made the executive decision for our little family of two: pack up…we were headed out.

Have you ever wondered what you would take in that moment you discover your house was on fire? Neither had I. I was frozen. I was crying. I was refusing to leave. I was scared to death. My husband gave me a hug and told me to pack us each a bag. My bag was a hodge-podge mess of this and that: black dress socks, a cardigan sweater with no shirt to wear underneath, a pair of flip-flops. By the time I packed my husband’s bag I had gotten it together. He had a pair of dry pants, 3 pairs of socks, 3 shirts, a pair of dry shoes, I even remembered his contact case and toiletry bag. I wondered what he was doing in the other room. He was gathering money, credit cards, passports, birth certificates, marriage license…we weren’t just leaving. We were LEAVING. How could this happen? It then hit me…photos, our wedding bands, the pearl earrings my husband gave me for our wedding day just two months before, the bracelet given to my by my sisters, my graduation earrings. How do you stuff everything important into one small bag that you can carry over your head? I’ll tell you now. You can’t…some things get left behind. You don’t even realize it until later.

My husband is the smartest man I know. I wouldn’t have thought to grab those things. I wouldn’t have thought to grab the iPad, phones, and chargers so we could keep in touch with family and friends over the next few days. I wouldn’t have thought to throw the main breaker to the house to gurantee our safety and that of our neighbors and emergency crews. I wouldn’t have thought to leave the front door unlocked so that when the fire department came through they didn’t need to waste time at our house but could get to those who really needed help. I wouldn’t have…but he did.

When we walked out onto the front porch, the steps that had no standing water just an hour before were quickly becoming submerged. He told me to stay close, step carefully, and walk to safety no matter what. Each carrying just one bag over our heads, we waded through the water. It was cold at first. Freezing cold to be honest…but we didn’t even feel it. What was knee deep near our front porch was waist deep in the street. As we walked towards Lacy, it got deeper before it got better. Then there was nothing. Just three houses from our own, no standing water while ours was quickly going under. Where do you go at a time like this? No one could get to us. Local towns and roads were just as bad. We thought we would walk a few blocks to a little diner. Maybe wait out the storm. Wait for the water to go down. That is when we met Lynn and Dave. They lived just a couple houses up Lacy. Lynn saw us looking shell-shocked and ushered us into her house to dry off, change clothes, warm up, and call our families. We had never met these kind strangers but will forever be indebted to them. As we talked about past floods, our families, jobs, and anything else to keep our minds off of what was going on, my husband started making phone calls. His grandma asked if we had a shop vac. I laugh at that now realizing that no one could imagine until they saw.

It was then that we noticed we could see our house from the side window of Lynn and Dave’s home. It was then that we noticed that my car was half under water and rising fast. Had we only left our home an hour ago? I called work in a daze. I’m not sure why. I guess just to let them know I was OK. I asked to speak to the principal, the assistant principal, the secretary, anyone who could give me the OK to stay home a few days. I don’t remember whom I spoke with honestly. I remember crying and saying that I didn’t know when I would be back. My car was gone and my house was going fast. I sent them some pictures. No one could quite understand what I was saying until they saw. It was only 8:30am. Soon after, the side door opened and a woman walked in with a pair of shoes, her baby, and a blanket---she carried it all. I said that Lynn was upstairs and I was just a neighbor they took in from the storm: I assumed that this must be their daughter coming to help. It was another neighbor and her 8 week old daughter. A wall had collapsed in their basement. Her husband told her to come here. She had never met Lynn and Dave either as she had worked nights up until having her little one. We were all in this together now.

By 9:15 or so we received a robocall from the Village telling us to seek high ground and evacuate!! Where were they three hours ago when we waded through storm water? Five hours ago when we could have gotten our cars out? Why now? What took so long? It was a slap in the face. We could see the waterline on our house. It was just inches from the first floor windows: the ones that were 2 feet above the floor. It was certain…we had water in our main living level. It was gone. Everything. I started to think of the wedding gifts left in their boxes yet to find a place within our home. Were they high enough? What about the new bedding just put out last week, would it survive? We didn’t know.

Soon after, the fire department knocked on the door and told us we needed to leave. When the wall came down next door, it knocked out a gas line. We were not safe anymore. Lynn and Dave dropped us off at a hotel. It was only 10:00am. They weren’t supposed to rent rooms yet but I think they took one look at my soaked clothes and tear stained face and they found a vacant room for us. My husband and I were in shock. No one could really understand what was happening. He started making phone calls to insurance companies and family. I started researching about floods and FEMA. The rain had finally slowed down. A friend picked us up to take us to lunch. We had a few beers. Ok. We had a lot of beers. Then he took us to look at the house. The yellow police tape had been ripped off the Lynn and Dave’s mailbox. Climbing into their backyard I could see our home. Just the top of the garage remained. My car was no longer visible at all. My husband’s car was somewhere in the garage. The water stopped just short of those living room windows. Did it really matter? I didn’t think so. The water was in the house…all of the house. I could swim in there if I was brave enough. I definitely would have needed to swim TO the house. It had to have been at least 12 feet deep in the street.

After a long night full of tears and anger in the hotel, we went back to the house. Water had started to recede for sure but there was still no way we could get to the house in the days ahead. The auto insurance company wanted to come look at the cars. My husband told him to bring scuba gear. You still couldn’t see them. We heard rumblings of an emergency Village meeting on that Saturday morning. We left my husband’s grandparents’ house early enough to get there…they were kind enough to give us a place to stay. We sat through a lot of talk about what exactly happened. There were a lot of angry people. I heard things about 50% and 1992. I heard things about elevation and mitigation and ICC. I took random notes with half words scribbled on an envelope we found in the back of the room. We didn’t know what any of this meant but I was going to find out! At about 11:00 I got a phone call from my dad. He said he was in my driveway and my mom was in the house. I didn’t understand.

As quickly as the water came, the water receded. It was amazing. The water was GONE. Then I went into the house. I couldn’t hold back the tears. A beautiful custom shower gift from my aunt was the first thing I saw on the floor. The little 1940’s antique dresser I had purchased at a yard sale was overturned and dripping water. And the floors…covered in dirt and mud and sewage. The smell was enough to gag you. I walked through the house and then I saw it…my recipe book. All the recipes I had been gathering through the years from friends, family, my grandmother that had passed away. It was sitting in a puddle. I had been looking through it the night before looking for some favorite recipes to make over the weekend. It must have floated off a table or the couch. I truly lost it. Wedding photos were covered in gunk. My shoes had floated all throughout the entire house through an open closest door. The only pair that remained unharmed were the red high heels I wore on my wedding day as they were tucked up on a shelf. I started to think about what was in every drawer and closet. Our guest book and photobooth album from the wedding, new linens still in their packages, computers, birthday gifts yet to be opened, very few things were left. Very few moments passed without a new discovered loss.

The water was still deep in the basement and needed pumping. A brother showed up with a pump. An old friend was there to help him. We started bagging items we thought we could save and clean. The smallest items became super important. We worked all day. The next day, more people came…uncles and aunts, friends, brothers, sisters, parents, and cousins. It was overwhelming to see the outpouring of love. Gloves were worn and belongings were bagged. Most were tossed into the ever-growing garbage heap. Others were put into boxes to be sorted through later. A railing was removed from the porch and a truck was back up to it. A small wall was removed so couches and beds and tables could be pushed out the door. A window was knocked out so the basement could be emptied with a shovel. It took all day. But it was complete. The auto insurance adjustor stopped by with a look of pity. The flood insurance adjustor was all business with his camera a tape measure. We were hopeful for a quick resolution. We found a general contractor that weekend. He even stopped by to look at the house. He gave us directives on how to remove the damaged dry wall and floors. We had a plan. We would get through this.

Then 10 days later the trash hadn’t been picked up yet. We had gone through three thirty yard dumpsters removing the walls, floors, fixtures, and anything else left in the house. My husband was burning through his days off quickly to do the interior demolition. Sub contractors would not call us back. One even claimed that they were not longer doing HVAC work…and they are an HVAC company. We spoke with a lawyer who helped us interpret our flood insurance policy. We were shocked to find out we didn’t have coverage for contents. None of our personal belongings would be replaced. We thought we had made a mistake and had gotten duped into a bad policy. It turned out that is quite the norm. We found out we only had 60 days to file our initial claim it the insurance company. We had no idea what we were doing. Sub contractors walked into the house and laughed. We couldn’t get any estimates. We had no idea if what the insurance company was offering us was fair. We felt like they weren’t on our side. They were supposed to be working FOR us and not AGAINST us. Our hope was quickly fading. We thought for sure that the Village would be helping us more. We waited for officials to walk down our block and ask if we needed help. We waited for the Village to answer our million questions. We waited and we waited. Nothing was happening.

So now it is 84 days later. We signed that initial insurance claim for way too little money. We are trying to gather supplemental estimates to see if we can increase our final settlement. We keep getting hung up on by sub contractors. We hired a new general contractor who is working his butt off and is getting laughed at just at much as I did…glad to see it wasn’t just a girl thing though. We finally got some answers from the Village. Our home is 115% damaged…if that is even possible. We have a ceiling and roof that that is about it. We don’t know what direction we will be going with our home. We long for a buy out from the Village and/or county and FEMA. I spend my days researching websites looking for a way out of this mess. We live with my parents…it’s every newlyweds’ dream, right? We had to buy one new car and I am driving my husband’s grandma’s 2001 Neon: my 7 year old nephew didn’t even know how to roll down the crank window. We have formed new friendships with our neighbors and share all the information we get our hands on. We are confused and tired and just wanting to close this terrible chapter. We know more about insurance and ICC and CRS and FEMA than any person ever wants to know. We educate anyone that doesn’t know whether they were affected this time or not.

But we also get up and go to work. We go to Fourth of July BBQs and weddings and birthday parties. We dream of a future when we have our own home and can finally start the family we thought would happen sooner rather than later. We make spreadsheets and document with pictures. We spend our days meeting contractors and our evenings attending Village board meetings. We let our officials know we are still here. Life goes on for everyone else but not for us. When you mention THE flood people forget that this has a VERY specific meaning to you. It is April 18th. It is the day everything changed. Someday, maybe we can be whole again. But today we just keep trying to put our lives back together one fragment at a time. Most will never remember what happened on April 18, 2013 but we will never forget.