Flood of Sept 2009 and where we are at now in March of 2010
Mood:  chatty

Well,,,, Those of you who have checked on our website know that our home was flooded in Sept of 2009. We had to evacuate all of our dogs with a canoe!!! No one ever thought that the water would get that high. The problem for us occurred when the Oronoco dam broke. If that hadn't happened our house would have been safe!! Ahhh Well life happens. To bring it into perspective, the imiges of the tusami in Japan closely resembles what happened in Hammond. We were luckier than them though as quite a few of the houses can be fixed but they had to be completely gutted at least up to the ceilings on the main floors. Some had to be gutted on the second floors as well. Several houses can not be rebuilt and had/have to be torn down. We were fortunate in that we are able to rebuild.

 

I need to make a special mention of the Luther college swim team out of Iowa. They arrived in a bus and really really helped with all of the work. Another special mention goes out to Nachama Disaster Relief Services. They arrived with tanker trucks to clean and sanitize the homes once they were gutted. They helped with the gutting as well. Americore also sent many people to help with the gutting and other work. Lutheran Disaster Social Services stepped in to help advise us on the processes and things that we needed to do. A big shoutout goes to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army. They were extremely helpful with serving hot meals for workers and supplying some gift cards so that we could meet immediate needs. And big thankyou goes to St Patricks in West Albany who had just had a rummage sale and thankfully was still set up. They opened up and let all flood victims come in just days after the flood to take whatever items we needed free of charge. We also have to put out a big thank you to Jenny's Green House in Zumbro Falls. She opened up her green houses and all the items from St Patricks was moved there and then they opereated as a donation spot for people to drop of clothes, furniture, and other necessities like shampoo, laundry soap, razors, and everything else you could think of. They kept that open for about 1.5 months after the flood and then had a huge garage sale and donated the proceeds to the disaster releif efforts. Holiday Inn was very nice and opened up thier wherehouses in Winonna and sent us bed after bed and dressors and amoirs. When Jenny had to close the donation center St Johns Lutheran Church in Hammond offered us the use of thier sanctuary as a donation/food shelf. St Johns has been allowing us the use of thier hall since shortly after the flood to use as a comand post and place where we could have meetings and serve food. There are several ladies in the area that are cooking daily lunches during the week for people working in town and there are several churches that are helping out with lunches on the weekends when we have been having alot more people to serve. Lutheran Social Services/Disater Relief has been coordinating the volunteers and has a case worker who helps us with paperwork and other things. LSS has been indespensible to us since the flood. Woodbury Lutheran Church has been very active with volunteers and donations. St.Phillips has been awesome helping us with the rebuild process. They actually hit thier 50,000 volunteer hour while working on my house. WOW. I am sorry I can't mention everyone who has helped so please know that everyone who has been here has been instrumental in rebuilding our community and we thank you mightily.

 

Here is a timeline of what we have been doing.

On the first day of the flood we had to evacuate with the dogs. We were only able to get the dogs. There was no time to try to salvage anything in the house. We took the dogs to my mother-in-laws house in Grand Meadow. She has a 2 car garage that is heated and insulated that she gave up for our dogs.

The 2nd and 3rd day after the flood we weren't able to get back to see what was left. We spent those days just trying to cope with the shock.

On the fourth day we drove to Hammond where they escorted us to our house for 5-10 min on the backs of 4 wheelers so we could see what the damage was and pick up essentials like wallets and medicines.

On the Fith day we were allowed in for 30 min to grab anything we could salvage that was of immediate need.

On the sixth and seventh day we were allowed to bring 2 people with us to start the serrious business of salvaging. We were then able to dismantle our kennels and bring them to Grand Meadow for the dogs. That was our top priority!!!!

On the eigth - tenth days we started trying to salvage our personal possessions and started to catalog and throw out the things that couldn't be salvaged. There wasn't much that could be saved. Just last night I figured out what the loses were to our personal property and it is very close to $35,000. Its amazing how fast the numbers start to add up. And we did not have any flood insurance as we weren't in the flood zone. Ugh!!

For the next week were were able to bring additional family members in and some friends to facilitate the process of sorting and cataloging the loses. My Stepfather helped us out tremendously by draining the oils and gases out of our power equipement. He managed to save our riding lawn mower, generator, preasure washer and push mower. My Mother, Sister, Sister in Law, Neice, and a cousin helped with cleaning out the house and garage and sorting through the salvagables, cleaning and sanitzing tools and other things.

On the Third week after the flood some volunteers started arriving to help us start gutting the house and the rental house that we owned right next door that was also damaged. The volunteers were so awsome!!! There is no way we would have been able to even get started without them. It was so depressing looking at all the damage and work to be done. It took us a long time to get all the gutting done and then the houses had to dry out before we could go anyfurther.

Once the houses dryed out we were able to start the rebuilding. Each house had to have all electrical redone, all plumbing redone, and the all heating and air redone. We then had to insulate and put up poly. Then it was on to hanging the drywall. The volunteers have been a tremendous help doing insulation, and hanging drywall. Once that was done on our house we were able to get a company to do the mudding and tapping. They are also putting in all my tile floors. Soon we will be able to start painting then we will have to finish the upstairs it needs some new drywall hung and mudding and tapping and new flooring, etc. Then we will be able to start installing the cabinets and getting the plumbing fixtures installed. We are hoping to be back home by June. (crossing our fingers) We finished the hanging drywall last weekend on the rental house and the subfloor was finished yesterday. Volunteers are starting on the mudding and tapping today. (crossing fingers that everything goes smoothly.)

This has been a really difficult last 6 months and we really really appreciate all the prayers, volunteers, and donations that have come in to help our community rebuild. Hopefully this time next year our town will be mostly rebuilt. I understand from those who went through the Rushford flood that it takes about 3 years for a community to start to really show recovery from something like this. I really feel for those who are in Japan right now. I know exactly what they are going through and its mind-boggeling all the things they are going to have to do to recover and on such a larger scale than our little town of Hammond.