October 16, 2005
What is going on here?!?!
I had a little disaster on Friday. A pipe burst on my third floor and water poured down my walls and ceilings for about 4 hours. Ceilings in my kitchen and bathrooms collapsed. My basement had about 6 inches of water in it. For those of you who don’t know, I have a finished basement which I use as my office/computer room. Three of my main computers were all but submerged under water. Not to mention the water was high enough to reach the bottom shelves and draws of my 3 desks. I lost photo paper, routers, hubs, keyboards, powerstrips, subwoofers, etc… Luckily I keep my laptop and my camera equipment with me at all times. I estimate I lost around $4000 to $5000 in computers, electronics, and personal effects. And the worst part is I don’t have a homeowners policy that covers personal belongings. More about that later.
I found out about this around 1:30 on Friday afternoon. A service crew and the fire department had already been into my house to shut off the water and power (water was spilling out of all my electrical outlets). The fire department officially condemned the townhouse until further notice. How I came about this information is quite interesting. I was sitting at my desk when I randomly decided to check my messages at my house, which I do every 4 months or so. I’m not exaggerating. The message I got was a gentleman apologizing up and down about my condo and telling me they’ll do everything they can to help us get through this. I thought it must be a wrong number, until I flashed back to the beginning of the message where he addressed me as Mr. Sinclaire. I knew then it wasn’t a wrong number. At this point in the message I still had no idea what had happened to my townhouse. The gentleman leaving the message had assumed I already knew everything that took place and didn’t mention any specifics. He kept saying sorry and used words like extensive damage and tragedy. But mostly he kept apologizing. That’s what really freaked me out. For all I new the condo may have burned to the ground. The adrenaline pumping through my veins was overwhelming. My hands were shaking. After what seemed like an eternity the guy leaving the message finally shut up and gave me his number. I called him and he filled me in. He said I should consider this an emergency and head home right away. So I did.
From this point on everything felt very surreal. Walking up to the back sliders, I was still telling myself it must be a mistake. It was a really weird feeling. Then, through the glass, I saw the layers and layers of mud on my white linoleum floor in the shape of boot prints. That’s when it really hit me that this was no mistake. Even when I went into the house there was a very eerie feeling. It was very cold and very dark. And a mess. Plaster and water everywhere. The basement was pitch black and all I had was a lighter to light my way. All my flashlights were in the second half of the basement. Good idea, lets keep the flashlights in the darkest, hardest to reach place in the house. Genius! The water had receded a little and was only about 3 inches deep. I pulled the cover off the window to let in some light. You know the rest.
Let me address my two major mistakes here.
- Putting three high-end computers on the ground. Idiot! My rationale here was that this townhouse has never had water in the basement since it was built 20 years ago. It is located on high ground. I never even thought of a pipe bursting. Lesson learned.
- Not having homeowners insurance for personal belongings. Idiot! I have no rationale here. Idiot!
A fire and flood clean up team came around 4:00 and went to work. I had to get an electrician in to get some power to the place so we could run 3 commercial dehumidifiers and 6 blowers. He was nice enough to get power to my refrigerator too. We saved the Heinekens! It was touch and go for a while there, but I think they’ll be alright. We all got done around 9:30, sealed the house up, and left for the night with the equipment still running. I went back Saturday afternoon to start throwing away stuff in the unfinished portion of the cellar. This stuff was mostly junk anyways. When I first got there on Saturday I had a chance to really look around for the first time. It reminded me of a place that had been abandoned for several weeks. It was kind of sad.
I think we are all just about caught up at this point. I’m meeting with about 10 people on Monday to assess the damage and see where we go from here. The good news is everything structurally in the house will be covered. They explained it to me this way; if you could take the condo and flip it upside down, anything that doesn’t fall will be covered. Too bad I didn’t bolt my computers down. 
By the way, Cameron wants me to make sure everyone knows the cat is okay. She made it out alive………this time.
The truth is, it really isn’t so bad. So I lost my computers and some other things, I’ll get new ones. I always tell Cameron not to cry over things. What kind of person would I be not to take my own advice. And like I said, the damn cat’s alright. And yeah, the house is inhabitable for a while, but it’s not like we don’t have a hundred places where we could go. That’s more than these poor people in New Orleans can say. This unfortunate event really puts the Katrina tragedy into perspective. I had 6 inches of water in my basement which caused thousands of dollars worth of damage. These people had 6 feet of water and lost everything they owned. I had a lot of damage done to my townhouse. Damage that can be repaired. People lost entire houses due to hurricanes Katrina and Rita. How could I possibly feel bad for my situation? I don’t. Shit happens.
This brings me too the main point of this entry. Believe it or not my condo isn’t suppose to be the main focus here. What is suppose to be the main focus is all the crap that has happened in the last year. I’m speaking of the tragedies around the world. I have never seen anything like this. Granted I’m no historian, but I don’t recall any period in history where so many natural disasters have taken place in such a short period of time. Between tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and flooding it seems like where getting everything thrown at us at once. In the paper today I was reading about parts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts that were completely under water. Some of this I saw first hand. I was at my cousins house yesterday and saw her neighbors pumping out raw sewerage from their basements. Last week it was New Hampshire. Houses and businesses up there were totally wiped out. I don’t need to mention all the disasters that have made the national and international headlines in he last year. Seriously, what is going on here?!?!
Am I wrong? Maybe I am. I hope I am, because there’s some serious environmental mayhem going on out there. It would be nice to now that this is just a cycle that we go through every X amount of years. Or that this is just a major string of bad luck for the planet Earth. Maybe next year it will be Jupiter’s turn and the year after that Venus will get the crap kicked out of it. I don’t know. I really don’t have a point here. I just thought I’d share this observation with you.
On the brighter side, at least it finally stopped raining today.
Filed under: Life
2 Comments
Serenity, to my pleasant surprise, had a bit of all four of those characteristics. Now that you know that, you must have deduced that I may be a bit wishy washy with this review and that you should take it with a grain of salt. I would agree with you. The movie had average special effects, sub-par acting, and a mediocre plot, but I still enjoyed it very much. It will definitely end up in my DVD collection. If you can get by the many flaws of the movie and strip away the layers of blah, what you have at the core is a fun shoot’m up space saga that does a good job of keeping you guessing. I would love to be able to rave about how great the special effects were and how deep the plot is, but I can’t. They were simply okay. But okay seemed to work just fine. Let’s get real for a second here. My grandmother isn’t coming to see this movie. As a matter of fact I can’t think of one member of my rather gigantic family that would come to see this movie. This movie isn’t for them. It’s for me and space geeks like me. And for us, it was a pretty fulfilling ride.
