The flood of 2010

It was a Thursday morning and I was woken up by a whining dog. He sat by the gate at the bedroom door whining his little heart out and so I woke up, went to the bathroom, and realizing I was running late getting ready for work, I woke Dave up to take the dog outside while I showered. I went to the bathroom, turned on the water and it was freezing cold. UGH! What in the world was wrong?!? I put on my robe and marched back into the bedroom to now demand that the sleeping Dave get up and investigate the pilot light on the water heater to see if it was out - and of course he then needed to take the dog on a walk since I still had to shower. I removed the gate from the bedroom doorway and Gromit ran out of the bedroom towards the front door. I walked towards the kitchen to check out the water heater when I noticed wet footprints. Did Gromit pee on the floor waiting to go outside? No. I followed the footprints toward the kitchen to find an inch of standing water in the kitchen overflowing to the dining room and hallway and a gushing water heater. I knew right then it was going to be a long day.

Me yelling "the kitchen is flooded!" is what finally got Dave out of bed that day. He ran out to the kitchen to see the mess and went to find the emergency maintenance number. I went back to the bedroom to throw on some clothes and take Gromit outside since he was still whining by the front door. Gromit and I got downstairs and I saw water gushing out of the light fixture in the ceiling in the vacant apartment below ours. Bad news!

When Gromit and I had walked around the building we saw the complex manager running across the street in her pajamas towards our apartment. I decided then would be a good time to call into work to let them know I was at least going to be a little late.

When we got back to the apartment Dave and the apartment manager had turned off the water to the apartment and they were trying to suck up some of the water with a wet vac. Dave and I started moving some of our furniture from the dining room and hallway into the living room so that it didn't get too wet from the water that had seeped into the carpet. A little later the carpet cleaner showed up to suck up the rest of the water with his industrial vacuum and the maintenance guys came to install a new water heater. When it was all said and done our carpets were lifted and industrial blowers were placed underneath in an effort to get everything dry again. Sound familiar? We had a very similar incident in 2009.

Now, a little more than a week later everything has dried out and our furniture has been put back in its place. A couple runs of the Bissel Little Green and some Febreeze took care of the wet carpet smell and things are back to normal. One more disaster down. Let's hope the next incident in our lives waits for a while to happen. I'm worn out.