Sisters,
I don't know how much this has been publicized nationally, but my area got hit with some pretty nasty rain Monday night.
(article here)
I thought we had it pretty bad... A transformer blew, and a wire snapped in my backyard, so I came home to find my backyard on fire. We lost power from 4:30 p.m. until about 1:30 a.m. We've had problems with that transformer for years, and there's a petition going to the governor about it now after this. Because of this, my side of the street, and several nearby courts were affected by the power outage. We were bailing out the basement to keep it from flooding, as were many others on the street. Luckily we beat the water level and kept from flooding.
I found out today that the court at the end of my street wasn't so lucky.
A friend of my mom had 28 inches of water in her basement. Everything from down there is gone. And she's the luckiest one on the court. Everyone from that court was evacuated by boat and taken to the high school. The amount of furniture and boxes and everything that you see walking down that street is un believable... all ruined.
The house that got hit the worst belongs to the family of my friend Nick. I've known Nick since we moved here 15 years ago. He is hands down the nicest guy I've ever met, and his parents and sister are all wonderful, really nice people too. One of their back walls (in the basement maybe? I'm not totally sure) has either collapsed or is about to collapse. They almost condemned the house on the spot, but for some reason, someone wouldn't let them. There have been all sorts of structural engineers in there, but from the sound of it, they're going to lose their house.
I can't imagine what they're going through... Why did it have to happen to, like, the nicest people in the entire neighbourhood? We've told them that, if we can help them in any way, they should call us, but still, I feel so helpless. All I want to do right now is wave some magic wand and make their house Ok again, or hire the best structural engineers in the country to fix their house for them by tomorrow. I can't do either of those things, and I hate it. They don't deserve to be going through this.
I'm sorry this is so long, but if you've made it this far, thank you. I'm just so shocked by this that I don't even know if this all made sense.
Please, just keep them in your prayers...