Icky Ike even hits the Midwest

No Week 2 NFL roundup today, boys and girls (I'm sure that bums many of my readers), and I don't even want to talk about WEFFL right now (a combined 24 points from my RB2 and all three of my WRs ~ lovely).  No, there wasn't much football watching yesterday, despite remnants of Ike that came whipping through the Midwest and initially set up as a perfect day to stay inside and get some projects done around the house while watching football.  No, instead, because of that very same Ike, I spent 6 hours over at some friends' house helping them pump out three to four inches of water (storm water AND sewage) out of their basement and then helping with the beginnings of the clean up.

I won't go into all the gory details, but suffice it to say that there was some nasty water we were mucking through.  In their basement stairwell there was about 12-18 inches of balck water, and that was pushing against their basement door hard enough that it was forcing the water through the door.  At the same time it was coming up their drain by their washer, and fortunately that water wasn't near as dirty as the stuff in the stair well, nor was it gushing as fast.  Once we got the stairwell under control, we were able to open the door and start pumping and bailing water out of the basement proper.  With the shop vac alone we easily did 3000 gallons of water, add to that what the submersable pump and build-in sump pump were pumping out, it was wet.  We got things under control in about 4 hours, and then started cleaning up and putting furnature on blocks and throwing out rugs and boxes of stuff while making piles of stuff that they were going to wipe down and clean.  They've got a lot of work ahead of them, and I'm sure I'll be over there later in the week to help them tear out carpet (the carpet is a total loss), and they'll have to replace some sections of wall, but most of the furnature and even boxes of stuff were spared.  Unlike their neighbors whose sump pump wasn't working and they got a foot and a half of water in their finished area (ugh).  I told my buddy, "I feel sorry for your neighbors, but I'm glad we're not dealing with that."  He agreed.

Did I mention his wife's pregnant?  Yeah.  Beth's due in December.  Needless to say she's not helping with any of the clean up.  She did get us lunch though :)

Also, in my haste to help them, I forgot about having my cell phone on me and it popped off my belt while I was dumping the shop vac.  It was soaked, and though I tried to dry it with a hair dryer, it's shot.  Gone.  Buh-bye cell phone.  So I've got to see how much Verizon is going to gouge me for a new one after work today.  Not looking forward to that.  Stupid mistake on my part, but at least we didn't have the flooding.

Well, not to the degree of my friends.  We got a little water in our back basement door, but it flowed right to the inside drain and we just need to dry out the carpet in the basement bathroom, carpet that fortunately doesn't have a pad under it.  Wish I could say that not having pad was brilliant foresight on our part, but we were just being cheap and putting a burber carpet remnant in there.  Still, it works, and dries out just fine with a couple fans and a few hours.  And again, we're just thankful that we didn't get any major flooding.