"The Flood of 12/11/08"

Jason and I had planned on sleeping in a little on Thursday, as it was finals week and we didn't have anything super earlier to wake up to & worry about. But I woke up to a frantic phone call from Trevor at 7:30am. "WAKE UP! Get out of bed, look outside, get your stuff off the floor!!" I shot out of bed, looked out our back window and my heart raced. There was practically a lake out there. I ran out to our front room/kitchen and looked out the window, another lake. The water level was so high that it was nearly an inch before it was about to sneak in through the front door.

I hadn't slept well that night; I was restless with the thunder and the never ending rain. I remember thinking that this rain was going to ruin my plans for the following day. My plans of finally going to the beach, soaking up some sun and relaxing for the first time in months as I was done with all my exams and practically done with assignments. Boy was that wishful thinking.

Jason and I worked quickly. The adrenaline pumped in and we quickly moved our bed away from the window, threw everything that was hiding beneath it on top of it, we moved everything that was in our front room to our room and put it on top of desks, the bed and a table, we moved everything away from the walls, threw our couch on top of some chairs, and stuffed towels in front of the door to prevent the water from coming in. We were not very successful with that. The water slowly found its way in our apartment, within an hour we had 3 inches of rain covering every inch of our place. Thankfully we had got everything up and off the floor. The only thing that was ruined was a desk and a bookshelf.

Sandbags finally arrived and everyone in our complex and the community worked quickly to prevent any more water from entering people's apartments. With the help of 3 others, we were finally able to contain the flood in our apartment and get the water out. By 2:30pm (7 hours later), although still raining, the problem had been contained.

Everyone that lived on the bottom floors of 3 buildings in our apartment complex had been affected. Our homes had been destroyed. We were homeless.

For the next few nights we spent the night at random upstairs apartments that had been open, we were given free meals at "The Club" (the schools cafeteria), and we tried to find "joy in the journey".

As of now, all of our carpet has been ripped out, as it is going to be replaced & the dry wall 2 feet and below will be replaced. Everything we have has been moved to the tile-the little area of our kitchen and our bathroom.

The crew that was hired is working non-stop, Monday-Sunday and late into the nights to get our apartments back to normal. Hopefully they will be done soon and that our lives can go on as normal once again.

Through out this all it was so wonderful to see so many volunteers helping; people within the community, students from the community, other people from our complex, most of them strangers giving their time and service to those of us in need. To them, we cannot thank you enough.

Once the water had been removed & what its like now....