The GREAT Flood

My parents love to travel and have the opportunity to do so frequently.  They are also lucky that they have some great friends who also enjoy traveling with them!  We're not talking a week to Mexico at an all inclusive here, but long 3-week vacations to exotic and foreign locales.  For example, they went to Europe for 3 weeks: 2 weeks on a cruise around the Mediterranean with a week floating around Italy prior.

This January/February they jetted off to Australia and New Zealand.  Of course, when these vacations come up us kids are there to help out with the house.  Usually this involves stopping by a few times to water the plants and pick up any random flyers or newspapers in the mailbox or front door so it looks as though someone is home.  This time it included blowing snow if we should get a significant fall.

Ryan and I went to our scheduled house check up on a nice warm Sunday (45 degrees out).  It had been VERY cold the week before (-20 degrees).  We pulled up and got out and found a lot water coming down from underneath the kitchen.  Far too much to be snow melt.

Fearing the worst, we entered and water was everywhere:  dripping down the wall & window under the kitchen, following the floor joists in the ceiling and dripping down the ceiling and around the inset lights.  The floor was drenched from the family, to the hallway, underneath the bar, to the bathroom, in the closets and crawl space.  The back bedroom has water pouring out of the ceiling and walls and water was draining its way through to the laundry room.  The kitchen upstairs was also damaged from the spraying water under the sink.

Needless to say, Farmers call center did not understand the homeowners were not in town and continued to call my parents house to set up the cleaning crew (which was to arrive within one hour after contacting me)....8 hours later...several very frustrating phone calls and they finally got it right.

Ryan and I spent the whole day and night moving my parents house to the 1 room that was not damaged upstairs and the bedrooms.  All photos, records, furniture, clothing, shoes etc.  The clean up crew sucked up the water, tore up carpet, knocked down all the sheet rock.  The next day we returned to move all of the kitchen, dishes, pots, pans, cookware, glasses, crystal, china, spices.  We continued the next day.  Family and friends came to help.  I contacted contractors to interview them for the job of fixing everything with the help of my uncle.  We met with insurance and they moved the job to a large claims agent so I was in constant contact with him as well.

I took hundreds of photos of the damage, the damaged clothes, shoes, stuffed animals, dresses, furniture etc.

And my parents could not even see what damage occurred on their cruise in New Zealand!!  Finally, they were to arrive on Sunday night so I could retire my flood damage management career and:  SNOWSTORM!  They spent all of their day/next day viewing photos, interviewing contractors via phone and trying to grasp what really happened at their house for the first time from LA, of course.