Flood Photos

Many of you in sympathetic-ridden emails have asked what caused The Great Flood (and said emails are very much appreciated, even though I can't help but read your question with a subtext of "Please, please tell me what you did wrong so I can make sure this doesn't happen to me!"-ness).  It seems that the culprit was the hose on the washing machine which either slipped off or broke. 

Apparently that happens?

Here are my thoughts on that, in the order in which they occurred when I was informed of the cause of The Great Flood:

1.  Oh.  Okay.
2.  Wait, what?  They do that?
3.  Wait, what do you mean that happens all the time?  We live in the 21st century!  WHY HASN"T THIS BEEN FIXED WITH AN APP OR A COG OR SOMETHING?

I can't verify for myself the cause of the leak giant fountain of water because the washer is in a closet in my kitchen and my kitchen is filled with giant fans and dehumidifiers and 1/4 of my belongings that used to be in my carpeted rooms.

In an arrangement that made packing for a very long trip quite interesting (made even more so by the 99-degree temperature and 80% humidity of my drying-out-via-several-thousand-giant-fans apartment), the other three-fourths of my carpeted-room belongings are in 1) my bathroom, 2) my bedroom, and 3) my music room (which has been completely stripped of carpet, thanks to the dye-tastic Turkish rug.  Here are what those rooms look like at the moment:

Honestly?  My first thought when I saw all this was, "It's a shame I'm not moving soon!"

And while I'm digging through my new Flood Flickr set, here are some that Ben took to show me the flood as it looked on Monday (this would be post-Heroic Firemen who squeegeed out a great deal of the water):

Squishy Dining Room Carpet

Squishy Music Room and Office Carpet (with bonus view of the piano perched on heroic cans of corn!)

Jack enjoying the squishy carpet

So, yeah. The clean-up crew said everything should be dried out by Friday with the exception of two walls that they think need to be demolished to get the moisture out of the insulation. The laundry rooms needs to be re-dry-walled since the water ran all the way up the walls and into the ceiling. The carpet's a loss in at least two of the rooms and the pad's a loss in all of the rooms but my bedroom, which means that all of the carpeting needs to be replaced. And, to make matters more fun, my two insurance companies (one through the HOA for the structure, one for personal property) are both claiming that my policies don't cover carpets or the clean-up crew's work. Having several thousands of dollars in damages/services hanging over one's head isn't the most auspicious way to begin a vacation.

The work is carrying on though, despite my worries and my absence from the state. I didn't talk to any of my people today due to my transit across the country, but I plan on spending a good chunk of the morning tomorrow on the phone with various companies/agents/adjusters/etc.