I’m trying fitfully to sleep when I decide to go get some water and a snack. Unfortunately my crackers were soaked in water. That’s another lesson to me for being so clumsy with my glass. Also, at this point, I notice the basement is flooded. I immediately run to my computer and pull the cord from the wall. Then I start texting for help.
The water is about three inches deep on our property and is overflowing over the foundation wall into the wading pool of the living room. I immediately spot the primary source of the leak our basement door, three feet belowgrade and leading to a cement stairwell to the surface. The door has bowed inward under what must be a crap-ton of water and is leaking through the seam in a very foreboding Rapture-esque manner. I give it a push to try to seal it up tighter; Nature interprets this as a kick in the balls (As in: “Bitch, you think you can stand in my way? You dust, fool.”) and the door jamb immediately gives and the door swings open, hitting me in the forehead and knocking me down and also letting water freely cascade into the room raising the water level quickly from three to eight inches.
As it should be shared that our basement is also full of cabinets of food, I immediately rush the try to evacuate them. First thing I grabbed was fish sauce. After getting all of the boxes to higher shelving, I noticed that the salt and sugar bags were ruined. (Mom would later save the top halves of all the sugar bags because “they didn’t get wet.”) In addition the bags of dry noodles were now noodles and I resigned them to their fate.
Four hours of bailing, towel-wringing, and help from relatives was necessary before the basement was only wet in the sense that when you stepped on a tile water would bubble up from below it.
I am eternally grateful that most of the furniture down there is crap anyway, and the carpet was ditched long ago. There is still the issue of the power brick moistness that I’m hoping a bucket of rice can solve. Then again, what can’t rice do?
I forgot to mention that the water rushed into the crawlspace and snuffed the pilot light on the hot water heater. The dilemma that either the house was filling with gas prevented me from relighting it and made it really hard to fall asleep that night.