Rain is a Pain!

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I know this is really late and is old news to some but really was such a dilemma that it deserves a post.

On 11 December (2012) I woke up at 3:42 to the alarm going off.  I got up and deactivated it.  Our dog often sets it off when he runs into the lounge at night so when he came running down the passage I figured it was all fine.  Hubby got up and went to the bathroom and at this point I realise we have no power.  I peek out the windows to see if it is just us and I am pretty sure I can see the street lights as well as lights on at the neighbours house.  I tell hubby to please look if he says anything when he comes out of the bathroom.  He is of course still half asleep at this point.  I wander off to the dining room to see if I can see better through those windows and again, I am pretty sure I see lights.

I go back to the room and hubby is in bed.  I ask him if he checked and he mumbles something.  I gather that he is tired and a tad annoyed at being woken up by the alarm in the first place.  I think if the roles were reversed I would’ve felt exactly the same and thought” no big deal right?”

I go through to the kitchen and find out switch box thingy.  I flip a few switches and voila, we have light.  I close the cupboard and look forward to climbing back in bed.  As I am about to leave the kitchen I realise that the server was off and that I should probably switch it back on anyway.

I turn around to go to the study and at the kitchen door I look into the second lounge.  It seems really dark and I can immediately tell something isn’t right.  I switch on the light and the white tiles are all brown and muddy.  On closer inspection – and by that I mean open my eyes wider to wake up properly – I realise it is all wet!

I run off to the room to tell hubby the lounge is flooded.  I know he is tired so I walk in and say “I don’t know how to tell you this but the house is flooding”.  He shoots out of bed and starts toward the kitchen.  Both of us are standing on the top step looking at the mess.  We realised that the water must’ve reached electrical points and that is what tripped the electricity.  Now we aren’t sure if it is actually safe to walk into lounge on the wet floor.  So we stand.  After a few minutes our one dog comes running through the kitchen, down the stairs and into the water.  That answers that question then.  So we make our way out to the laundry and realise it is all under water.  There obviously has been a huge storm with tons of rain and with the water tables being so high the water had nowhere to go.  We also live at the foot of a hill and this hill is a forest thingy with a stream.  All the water just came running down the hill, into our yard and with nowhere to go created a river straight into our laundry / house.

We grumble and moan and sweep and start cleaning up.  Just after 6 we had managed to get most of the water out of the house and we were enjoying a cup of coffee.  Out of nowhere it starts to rain again.  Not a drizzle but it pours.  Within minutes the water has built up again and was starting to run into the laundry, which means it was heading straight into the house again.  In all that mess we had to dig up so much of our garden to create a path for the water to run away from the house instead of into it.

It was awful and tiring and cold and wet.  Hubby was a super star though and by the end of the day we kind of had it sorted.  Of course, it also stopped raining about that time.  We had to spend a large part of our holiday time putting in more drainage into the garden so that the water has somewhere to go.

Ive always been quite scared of rain and storms because I know what a powerful force of nature water can be.  It can be so destructive.  There are no words to describe how bad that day was.  At one point I thought “what the heck, there is no point because I can’t sweep or dig fast enough to stop the water from coming in”.  Of course now that it has happened we have added more drainage and more guttering to make sure it will NOT happen again.  At least we hope so because I do not want that day over again.

We also suspect that the stream broke banks in a few spots which is why it was like a river coming down the hill.  Now if only the owner of the land will do something about it on HIS side.  *grumble grumble*

Now, pictures for your enjoyment!  🙂