A stormy summer

A humdinger of a storm came through early Friday morning, (the 10th), awakening us at 3:30 a.m. with strobe-light lightening and nearly continuous thunder.

At first we thought it was just going to be another storm and an hour of lost-sleep. The heavy rain began,--almost a soothing sound as it drums on the sturdy roof (the roof that was replaced just over a year ago because of hail damage). Then came the first ping…ping, ping…pingpingpingping of hail. Oh. This was going to an above-average storm.

Then the hail sounded like it was smashing into the house from all directions at once and the wind was going like crazy. Since I couldn’t sleep, I got up to watch the storm--and noticed that the power wasn’t on. There was a noticeable absence of little glowing lights from different appliances around the house.

Then thoughts turned to the sump pump. Which runs on electricity. At first we thought, “Cedar Falls power is never out for more than 20 minutes, so we’ll be okay.” Only, the power didn’t come back on. Not until 7 pm that evening. (The Fagerstens didn’t get power until Sunday morning).

Here’s the point in the story where we were missing two vital pieces of information.

1) The storm had produced a “macroburst” of wind, probably of about 135 mph, and trees were down all over the city--indeed, all over the valley. 40% of Cedar Falls’ streets were impassable. And with all those trees, a lot of power lines came down.

2) When the sump pump well fills to the brim, although it flows over into the floor drain, it also means that all the gravel under the foundation is totally saturated, and the water will start seeking cracks and seams to relieve the pressure. If we had known this, we would have acted to get a generator, even if it meant waking people up. When the water starting pouring into the drain from the sump well, we thought we were okay.

Then we noticed a puddle of water on the opposite side of the floor. Bad news! We began checking the corners of other rooms. Same thing.

We moved furniture and pulled up the edges of carpet, and started using towels to soak up the water. All in almost-dark. How I wished for light! We used flashlights and a kerosene lamp. Still it was so gloomy. Later in the day, the sun came out which helped a great deal. As we kept reassessing, it became evident that at least the padding would need to be taken out.

By about 9 a.m., a neighbor had a generator going and allowed us to plug in our sump pump. (It took all of our outdoor extension cords to stretch across two other yards, and we had about 1 foot of cord to spare). It didn’t take long for the sump well to go down and the water draining into it from the foundation sounded like a water fall.

No more water tried to come in on the floors. Although we had to remove carpeting, they weren’t totally soaked, and so were much lighter to carry and easier to handle.

So, not only were we working in gloomy low light, the day was the hottest of the week and very humid.

No air conditioning.

No fans to start drying things out.

But we did have running water, even hot water (gas heater), so we could wash up and even shower. That made it much more bearable!

We went to bed so bone-weary, and with scrapes and bruises--those always come with that amount of furniture moving, walking on slippery cement floors and having uncovered tack strips. And it was best to work in bare feet.

I don’t know how many times I stepped back and landed on a tack strip.

Too many.

About mid-day, we found out it could be 1-4 days before the power came back on. So we borrowed a generator from the Harpers in the Waterloo ward. Finally! Fans and limited power.

By Saturday afternoon, we had taken all the padding and all the carpeting for all four rooms outside to dry in the bright sunshine.

I don’t know how many times we moved furniture back and forth from room to room to clear the way to get the carpeting out. And how many trips carrying things upstairs. (I know my calf muscles got quite a work out because by Sunday morning, it hurt to walk!)

Ward members stopped by to bring fans, or invite us to a cooked dinner, and helped carry the heaviest things. We were grateful!!