A Soggy Saga....

The storms in the Northeast caused our power and phones to be disabled. Roads were closed and the fire department couldn't even get to our house to help out... The story was repeated over and over here in NH. With no power we couldn't use our pumps and tried bailing from the sump hole. That became useless after the first two hours because we just couldn't keep up with the flow. We even tired the old syphoning trick with the garden hose.... ever tried to suck water for 60 feet? We could get it going, but then it would quit. Finally we quit too and just had to grab things off the floor and try to find higher places to store them. I felt like the sorcerer's apprentice carrying those buckets.

After about 6 hours the fire department was able to get to us and turn off the furnace, but there was still no power, heat or phone. We started a nice fire and kept warm there. Reading, sketching, talking and praying for the power to be restored.
Telephone poles were down at either end of our rural road. Our family room was entirely flooded and the water was rising when the power came back on at 9pm. We started our pumps and kept on pumping. By morning we were able to remove the dozens of books that had been soaked and other things to the garage on a higher level. Furniture and carpets were casualties but we did finally get the floor dried out with the use of fans and a dehumidifier.

We consider ourselves very very lucky. There are people here who lost their homes.. businesses that will not recover for months and many roads still closed ....some indefinitely.

Our biggest lesson from all of this... can be summed up in one word. When you live up here remember this: GENERATOR!