The Flood

While I was away for the weekend with the ARIT trip (see post on Sivas etc) exciting things were happening in my house.  Janelle says I would have known about it if I ever turned my phone on, which I don't, but it isn't like I could have done anything about it anyway.  Let me tell you about it from my begnning, which was about 48 hours after it was over...

We landed at Sabhina Gocken Airport and Sandy and Sue were kind enough to give me a ride all the way to my door so I was home at the very reasonable hour of something like 9:45.  Pekka was waiting for me at the door (I dont know how she knows) and I came in to call upstairs to Felicia who had been looking in on her. I wanted to let her know I was home safely so she wouldn't have to come up again.  As I walked into the living room I could tell something was wrong.  The floor was all warped and rough.  I had missed the lack of rugs in the entry way or hall way, but I couldn't miss the squish in the floor.  My call upstairs now had a question.  Andy answered the phone and I relayed that I was home and the cat was fine, but then I added, "Did something catistrophic happen while I was away?" "What, no one has told you?"  I am not sure who would have told me, but I guess if I had had my phone on... "There was a flood in your apartment on Saturday night." He went on to tell me that Janelle, Felicia, Danny and Layne (almost half of my aparment building) basically happened on the water streaming out from under my door at the same time around 7:45 on Saturday night. 

From talking to my neighbors, reading the 'incident report' and emailing the woman in charge of maintaining the campus apartments, I learned that one of the hoses from the wall to my toilet burst, sending high pressured water into the bathroom.

That must be some very high pressure water to pop that baby. 

  Fortunately? the apartment is on a slant, and while the living room filled up and there was (according to Janelle) three inches of water in the entry way (the lintel of the front door is about half an inch high), the kitchen and bedroom were completely dry. 

The entry way and front door.

All off this apparently happened in the space of about 15 minutes?, from when Janelle went downstairs past my door to start laundry and when she went down to take her trash out.  It is hard for me to believe that so much damage happened to the floor in such a short period, but it is true that none of the furniture is damaged.  There is no water mark on the wall or on the legs of the table or couch. 



The floor did get a nice cleaning.

Anyway, the gaurds downstairs were alerted and they called the cleaning crew which came right away to shop vac the water up. 


The guards may have already known that something was up since there was enough water coming through my floor to cause it to rain in the walk way under my window and outside their door. 


Directly under the window of my apartment.

It was not a rainy day.  Apparently, all of this water came from my appartment.

The water even found a way through the wall my apartment shares with Danny and Kristine such that they had a decent sized puddle in their bedroom as well. 

By the time I got home, everything was clean and dry.  Felicia and Janelle had hung up my rugs to dry downstairs and rescued the cat from not only the rising water, but the scary shop vac.  They had unplugged all of the electronics and nothing seems to have had any lasting damage except for the floor.  I hope that they (the school) is willing to fix it and that the don't replace it with pergo or something.  I am glad I missed it and am very thankful that there are so many efficent and helpful people around.