The Demise of our House

Friday, July 9, 2010

Friday we went to work exhausted, praying that the tarp would hold or that the weather people would be wrong and the rains wouldn't touch our house. Well, the weather people were wrong, but not about the rain. They were wrong because they didn't see that we would first have high winds and then torrential downpours for most of the afternoon. When we got home, we found out that we really didn't have much of a house to come home to.

Evidently (after talking to our neighbors) we found out that we had really heavy winds that must have whipped the tarp away from the roof even with bricks and tape and boards there to hold it all down. Since the roof was no longer protected when the rains began they just started going inside our house.

We went into our house on Friday night, only to see a stream of water coming down our stairway and water just seeping down the walls. We ran up to our bedroom to discover that everything up there was completely wet except for a small area on the far side of our room closest to the windows. Fortunately we had recently purchased about 10 plastic bins to start organizing our belongings, so Jon grabbed those and we started using those as buckets to catch the water that was pouring into our house. I tried to dry and then cover up our bedroom furniture the best that I could so that it wouldn't be completely ruined. Depending on the room plaster or ceiling tiles had fallen off the ceiling. All of our clothes in our closet were soaking wet. We went into the kitchen to see the ceiling tiles really full of water and a huge puddle of water just standing in the center of the floor. After going downstairs we discovered that the room that we had redone in the fall was pretty much untouched except that water was pooling on the hardwood laminate floor from the other room. Jon told me to call my parents to have them start praying that the rain would stop soon, so I called them quickly and explained what was going on.

It was amazing to see how God kept the things that were really important to us (i.e. pictures that can't be replaced, or furniture or gifts that were from my grandma that had more of a sentimental value) untouched. There could be water streaming just 1/2 an inch away, but those items weren't even touched! My piano, our couches, even our electronics (except for Jon's computer) weren't even wet.

While I called the insurance company, Jon called his dad to get some extra help. He also got a shop vac running to get some of the excess water out. He was able to call his mom to see if she could pick up a u-haul on her way home. When I got off the phone with the insurance company my mother-in-law had called and let me know that the U-haul place had closed at 4:30pm that day. By now it was 6:20pm to 6:30pm, she knew that they usually went to a place in Moon Township and suggested I try to find out if they were open still because she thought that they might be open until 7pm. Like I said before our electronics were dry, so I was able to grab my laptop and look up their information. I discovered that they were open until 8pm, so I called her back to let her know. Since she was still traveling home, she told me to find out if they even had any trucks available.

I called the U-haul place and found out that the largest truck they had was a 26 foot truck, but that any truck we rented that night would need to be back by 7am the next morning. I said that was fine, we had to get our furniture out immediately and we'd get it back. I called my mother-in-law back to let her know that we had a truck, someone just needed to go and get it before they closed at 8pm. Since we didn't have any place to put our furniture, she wasn't sure we should get the truck because we'd have no place to put the contents anyway.

So began round two or three depending on how you look at it of phone calls. I called Marianne Ayers (who lives about 6 blocks from our house) to see if they had any space we could use. Her line was busy. I then called Pastor Harrison (who had recently moved into a new house). He answered and I asked him if they had any extra storage at the new house and then explained our predicament. He told me that sorry, they didn't have any extra space because they had someone that had just moved in with them, but that given the circumstances we could use a room or two at the church (which is also a school building).

I called my mother-in-law back to let her know that we had a place to put the contents of the truck, but it needed to be picked up (I think by this time it was about 6:50pm). She was on her way to our house and needed someone to drive the truck, so since Jon's dad was at our house, she picked him up and went to get the truck.

Now that we had a truck and we had a place to put our belongings, we just needed to find people to help out since we were working against the clock. I called Marianne back because she'd called me in the meantime. She offered to go and grab us some supper and to help move things out as long as I could watch her children (an almost three year old and a 1 month old). I said that wouldn't be a problem. Then, she suggested I try to call the Buterbaugh family who also doesn't live far from us to see if they could help out. As I called the Buterbaugh's, their phone was busy. I ended up getting a hold of them and was told that Marianne had already called and told them what was going on, and that Terry (the husband) was changing clothes and could be here in 5 minutes. I told her that we didn't have the truck yet, so if he could come closer to 8 that would be great.

Sometime between all of my phone calls, Jon had called his friend John Duwel and he had said he was going to be coming over right away to help. Around 7:45, everything just started happening at once. Mr. Buterbaugh came, so I showed him the house and the damage. John Duwel arrived and helped Jon get the ladder up to the roof so that they could fix the tarp and get it back in place (meanwhile it was still raining). When I was done showing Mr. Buterbaugh the house and came out the back door, the truck had just arrived. I saw someone get out of their car and come up to the house with a tool box in hand. It was Pastor Harrison, he had brought his wife and some other lady that I never did catch her name. Marianne showed up and brought food for us. People just started going and getting shop vac's and garbage bags. I had had a chance to call my friend Amber and she and her husband were on their way.

Jon's mom and I left to take our dogs over to her house, so that they would be out of the way and safe. So, by the time we got back a lot of the truck was already packed up and more people had shown up to help. I think we probably had about 12 to 15 people helping us get our belongings out in a timely manner. Amber and Joe had arrived and Amber was getting ready to leave to come to our work (Jon, Amber and I all work at the same place) to get boxes to help out with the packing.

I went with Amber to get the boxes. By the time we got back from that the whole house was pretty much packed up (the things that we really needed to get out that is). By the time the house was packed up as much as we could, it was already going on 11pm (I think, maybe midnight - I was so tired by that point and I wasn't even allowed to help with anything physically).

We then went over to the church to unload the truck. Amazingly it only took about 40 minutes to unload. While we were finishing up unloading the truck, Mark Ayers was finally able to come and help (he'd been at work and had just gotten off). He brought his truck and so we loaded up all the bags of wet clothes and towels, sheets, bedding, etc and dropped it off at my in-law's.

Jon and his dad were still gone because they were taking the truck back the U-haul rental place. I had to stay up to get some laundry done since all we had were the clothes on our backs and they were soaking wet. By the time Jon got home (to the apartment in Jon's parents' basement that we are now staying at) and we were able to get to bed it was 2:30am.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

We were supposed to get up at a decent hour so that we could work on clearing out the house, but we were so exhausted we ended up sleeping until 10:30am. We never did end up working on the house that day though we went over and emptied the dehumidifiers. While we were there Jon found my bag that had my brush and spray gel, so I was finally able to do my hair. The majority of my day was done doing laundry in which I probably did at least 12 to 15 loads, if not more.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Before our house drowned, Jon was supposed to help Marc and Liz butcher their chickens on Saturday, but this was pushed back until Sunday. Jon was able to help them get their chickens butchered in the afternoon and I was able to get a lot more laundry done.

Monday, July 12, 2010

We debated about going to work since we had been told that the insurance adjustor would be contacting us that day. Jon had to go in to work because he's still incredibly busy, so I went too since even if they did call I wouldn't have a vehicle to go meet them. They never did call. We found out later that somehow they had Jon's parents number listed as our home phone, so the contractor had called there. Jon was able to call him back and got things set up for a meeting on Tuesday.

We soon discovered that while we had quite a bit of our things needed for daily living (considering the circumstances) that we still had a bunch of stuff we needed to find, or else go to the store and buy replacements (which we really didn't want to spend much money at this time). So after work, we got the key to the storage area and headed over to find the items needed.

Surprisingly, we were able to find almost everything that we were looking for. I was able to find my make-up, some contacts, my shoes (I only had a pair of flip-flops that I had been wearing on Friday and a pair of dressier shoes that I don't wear very often) and some other things that I didn't figure I would see for quite some time.

We really needed to find the remote to the fan in our bedroom and even found that. The only thing we weren't able to find was our DVD/VCR player remote. But, we already had our DVD/VCR remote from the player that had been in our bedroom which we found. So, we were able to swap those out so we could get things set up.

We even made it to the grocery store and got some food.

I told Jon while we were in the storage room and while we were finding things that we needed that I didn't feel quite as homeless as I did before.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

We went into work since we wouldn't be meeting the contractor until around 10:30am to 11am. Around 10:30, Jon found me and said we needed to leave right then because the contractor had just called and was headed over to our house.

We got to the house and were able to empty the dehumidifiers while we waited for the contractor to arrive. The house reeks, so I was headed to the front door to open it up to get some fresh air in the house, when the contractor came walking up the stairs. As he came in he told us that he rarely ever reads the file before he meets people, but for someone reason he decided to read ours and that he felt really badly for us since we were trying to make the house better and just weren't able to get the roof done in time.

We gave him a tour of our house and he was just dumbfounded by the damage. He then told us that the insurance had coded our claim wrong that evidently they didn't realize the extent of damage (although both of us had talked to the insurance and told them that every floor is flooded - with standing water, etc). So, we should have been coded under an emergency status and then they would have been out on Saturday to start drying everything out.

Evidently, because everything is still so wet, he wasn't able to do an estimate. He said the first step right now was to get huge dehumidifiers in and industrial fans to get everything as dry as possible (even with their equipment it would probably take about 4 to 5 days to dry everything out). While everything is getting dried out, his crew is going to come in to tear out all the carpets and flooring, they'll have to check out all the ceilings and insulation as well as walls. It sounded to us that in order to even give a proper estimate they are basically going to gut our house first.

He told us that he wanted to get this moving right away since we'd already lost 3 and 1/2 days due to the insurance coding error. We needed to get the rest of our stuff out as much as possible, or at least for now move things into a room that didn't get as much damage.

So, we when we got home from work (by the way, when I say home now, I mean the little apartment we are staying at because our house does NOT feel like our home), we quickly took care of the dogs and ate some food. We got over to our house around 6:30 and worked until after midnight. Liz, my in-law's and Jon and I were trying to get everything taken care of.

When we left the house last night, we had gotten a lot accomplished, but still have a lot to try to get out before this whole process is through.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

So here we are today absolutely exhausted! At this point, we would covet your prayers that the insurance will cover all of this damage, whether that would be to fix everything or to declare it a total loss. Either way, would be fine with us. Our concern at this point is that because we were in the process of redoing the roof that they will just not cover anything. Please pray for this situation. We would definitely appreciate as many prayers as possible about all of this.