Flood 2008

Here is a neighbor's garage completely full of water.
Neighbor's house with flood damage.
Here's a view from our upstairs balcony. The front of the boatlift is usually at the waterline. That's our deck floating in the front yard.
Here's Angie's (my best friend) husband Ben kayaking in the front yard!
This picture is blurry, but that's our front patio, as the flood waters creep up.

As most people know, central and southern Indiana had major flooding a few weeks ago. My family was unfortunate to experience the flooding first-hand. Our house had very minimal flooding in our basement, enough to have to pick up the boxes off the floor and get everything up onto tables and shelves. We also had water pouring in our dining room window. It was so weird the way it was just streaming down the wall. We couldn't even catch it in buckets as it was nearly flush with the wall. Come to find out, our gutter had separated from the house during the storms so the water was streaming down the roof and catching the lip of the window, so it just came right in the house. All we could do was throw towels at it!

My parents' houses were damaged more severely than ours. They live in Greenwood, just south of Indy, where flooding was major. Their basement had several inches of water, so furniture was damaged and carpet ruined (their basement is finished, whereas ours is unfinished). My parents also own a lake house on Lake Lemon in Brown County that had record-breaking flood damage.

The pictures above are from the lake. Those of you who have been down there can see how high the lake rose. It surrounded our house and then came inside, causing a lot of damage. The watermarks on the wall and the fireplace are several feet up. Thank goodness my best friend Angie and her family are living at the lake this summer so they were able to do some damage control for us, lessening the blow at least. At one point, Angie went in and our outlets were smoking due to electrical shorts, so her husband found the breaker and shut the power off. Had they not been there, our house could have easily caught fire. Scary thought.

Needless to say, these last few weekends have been filled with trips to the lake to work on the damage. Reconstruction is pretty much at a close, so hopefully this 4th of July will be a weekend full of boating and fun, instead of cleaning! Have a safe and happy 4th!