I know it's been a while, but I'm always getting updates on members build threads and I pop on to reply infrequently. I'd been contacted by a couple members asking how we did with Harvey. I'm here to give a short update
On August 27th, Harvey knocked at our door, but we weren't terribly concerned as we'd been through hurricanes, but this time was different thanks to the Army Corp of Engineers.
The rain was coming down and wind was high, but the water in a tiny creek was normal. However, Gary got up to go to the bathroom at 3am, ran to wake me up as the flood water was 6" from entering our home! The flood water within 10:00am to 3:00am had risen 10-12' in just a few hours!
Our garage foundation is a few feet below our house, I needed to get the Triumph TR6 up on the maxjax and the 67 Mustang as well. I was in shock as the water was going up while I was frantically working to same my classics and a few select tools! I wasn't able to get the Mustang up, but was on jackstands, but that didn't help. I was so angry at myself for not having done this; I was absolutely sure it was not going to go higher!
I ran back in the house to collect car titles, documents while Gary did the same. At this time water was coming in the house, our puppy was soaked and looking at us, like, "what the hell"~!
Above my garage is our upstairs "apartment", it's up 13' feet. So that's where we went. I put on my wetsuit that I grabbed along the way and ventured back into the house; the water was nasty, smelling like sewer. There wasn't much I could do or save as the water was already about 3', eventually got to 50"s!
From the apartment, we watched in horror as the water didn't stop rising! Please go down, but still didn't know why! We stayed upstairs for 5 days, had the generator, food, and toilet was still functional. After 5days, propane was going fast and food~ we thought sure the water would surely start going down! This is a pic from the rescue boat~
I did try to save my AC recycling machine, but still not sure if it's salvageable. The water in the garage got to Six Feet!
Our daily drivers were on the highest part of our driveway.
After a long two weeks, we finally got back in and began the cleanup and assessment~
I forgot to mention, we were rescued by FEMA. They came by in a small boat, yelled up to me, "are you guys ready to leave?", I was in good humor and said YES!
Now the hard part, Gary was on the phone with insurance, FEMA and who knows who else! Blind leading the blind as far as communications went!
Anyway, finally learned about why the water rose so quickly! The levee could only hold so much water and they began letting it out at an astonishing rate on the night of Aug 27th. The homes in the area today are still vacant, homes from the 100k to million dollar homes. FEMA would only cover 250k max no matter what home you had, we felt we were underhandedly screwed with a low ball settelment.
We decided not to stay in the flood district and our home there just went up for sale last week. There's still no one living out there. I didn't mention, but we stayed in that little aparment upstairs for several weeks, talk about zombie land. I slept with a 1911 and so did Gary, there were talks of looters, so we were a little worried.
Gary's friend from the geology industry, the mans girlfriend had her house for sale and long story short, we bought it! I'm still working on the garage/shop as it was greatly neglected.
We were spared regarding my 59 Apache as it was off site at a storage place, this is its new home!
I may have left some details out, but this is the short story~ there is still alot going on, mentally, physically, trying to get our lives back on track and we are doing just that!
Homes that are being torn down have to raise their foundations to X number of feet(~5' minium), this home was raised, or being raised at about 210k(unfinished).
I get to re-restore my 67 Mustang and my 73 TR6. The TR shouldn't be too bad, but the Mustang
both were considered totalled. I only had 5k on the TR and the mustang 15k. The money had to be used for furniture and other necessities.
I'll leave it at this~ All is well and we are happy, just be happier when the flooded home sells!!
Denee007