Cleaning Up After The Flood of Sept. 2004

These pictures are still kind of hard for me to look at now because I remember how upsetting it was to see all the mess left behind after the flood waters receeded and wonder how we were ever going to get it all cleaned up.

The top picture is our first glimpse of Mom and Dad's garage, all the mud and muck left behind, the horrible smell and all their ruined possesions. That is me standing in the doorway holding my mouth. I was crying most of the time when these first pictures were taken.

The water was probably alittle over 4-foot deep during the flood as you can see by the wet line on the garage wall. Mom had cardboard boxes full of family photos, her and Dad's High School yearbooks, diplomas and many other family treasures setting on the bottom of a shelf in there. They set in floodwater for almost three days and most everything that was in there was ruined. I remember setting up a table in the driveway, going through the soaking wet, mud covered boxes and trying to lay stuff out on the table to dry in the sunshine. Everyone in the condo complex was cleaning up their own messes and piling their ruined possesions in the parking lot to be hauled away....there were lots of tears that day.

Anyone who has never experienced something like this probably has no idea of the many emotions one goes through knowing that the floodwaters are doing their damage and then after they have receeded and actually seeing the destruction.

One thing that sticks in my mind was the little statues of a horse and a woman lying down that Dad had brought back from Europe during the war. They had been stored in the cardboard boxes in the garage and whittled down to almost unrecognizable form by setting in the water for so long. It was hard to hold back the tears as I held them in my hand and remembered playing with them as a young child and hearing the story behind them. It was equally as hard to toss them onto the trash pile knowing that they would never be seen again when the bulldozer came and hauled them away.

The second picture is of the back entrance to Mom and Dad's condo with the waterline visable on the bricks. Inside we found mud at least 4-inches deep and the table which had apparently been floating around in the floodwater for three days.

I remember telling someone during the clean-up that IF this ever happened again I would put up a "For Sale" sign outside of Mom and Dad's condo and just move them somewhere else where they would never have to worry about flooding again, although at the time, the thought of it ever happening again seemed impossible.

On January 5, 2005 the Ohio River flooded again and Mom and Dad got about 2-foot of water inside their condo.

They had just finished having all new drywall put in and were getting ready to finish off the rest that got damaged in the first flood.

Even though the second flood was not as bad as the first, it certainly gives us all something to worry about when the Mid-Ohio Valley gets too much rainfall!