Five years ago, at 5 am in the morning, my husband woke me up from a sound sleep (on a Sunday) to help him move things upstairs because water was getting close to the house. I thought he was crazy, but I helped anyways. Then we went outside and cleared storm drains, and went door to door letting neighbors know that it was starting to flood. Most said that it always did this, and that it would be ok. 

Nothing could have prepared us for stepping in to our house. We were able to get home Monday afternoon when they opened I-40 back up.

We started out by helping our neighbors do some stuff, then stepped in to our house. The refrigerator was laying on its back. I suppose water picked it up and it fell backwards. The sofa was rearranged. Things in the kitchen were now found in the bathroom, or in various other parts of downstairs. Everything got jumbled around. We were able to save some stuff. The fish tank stand and fish tank were ok (as were the fish at first). The sewing machine cabinet my grandfather had made was ok. The dining room table and chairs and various other things were ok. The new sofa was out. I guess that was not nearly as bad as losing all the books we used to have downstairs, that we had just several weeks before the flood taken upstairs. We still haven’t checked out a lot of the electronics. I don’t have high hope for them though. All my hard drives got wet. My Wii, the DVD player, the stereo system. I don’t know where to begin putting them all back together. Right now we have to focus on the house, but at some point I will have to start repairing everything else. I guess it’s better than what a lot of the other neighbors are doing.