MAMAAAAAA you have to come down NOW, there is water pouring down into the living room everywhere!
That's how we woke up early in the morning at the end of May with Beertje screaming at our bed. There was a nasty thunderstorm going and I had heard the noise of pouring water but had tried to tune it out and continue to snooze. Now I raced out of my bed with pounding heart. While running down the stairs with Jan in my heels, I assumed first that a window was pourly closed and we had water coming in from there.
But no. We arrived in the living room with a shower of water coming through the lamps and the ceiling on a growing wide puddle of water on the wooden floor. What the hell! How?
Shit, buckets, mops , electricity off, mop , no take insurance pictures before touching anything, phone the fire department, what to do first!
In a chaotic hour, we raced with 5 (there was a helpful little friend in the house from a sleepover) with buckets, all the mops we could find and mopped the floor. Jan and I climbed the flat roof to inspect in orde to realise that the neighbour's roof in renovation didn't have seals and gutters at this moment in this downpour. Yeay, we might get all the water volume from their roof in between our wall and zinc seals.
While buckets caught most of the downpour through the ceiling we realised that our closet along the wall also caught a stream of water. We rushed to save the large amount of old non-digital picture albums on the top shelves and dip and sort and dry them over the seats that became a big sorting center.
With the thunderstorm easing away our rush also eased a bit and we got time to phone insurance and phone and pound at the neighbours to get a hold of them and their roofer. We got back on the roof with a new storm approaching and breaking lose shortly after the first time. Jan had tried to shield our wall a bit with plastics but that couldn't withstand the storm.
We watched a new shower coming down through our spots and ceiling but at least half of the cupboard was already empty...but it just spread and starting sipping at new places. The whole floor and cupboard was covered as much as possible with our stock of towels to try to prevent the damage. We mopped and mopped with the rain radar on our phones.
While a lot of nearby lower streets (among other at the boy's school and along the abbey) flooded with mud streams because of these exceptional storm downpours, the roofer of our neighbour had arrived and the neighbour herself came to help empty the closet and dry and sort our goods further throughout our house.
The roofer managed to make some emergency repaires that stopped the water of flowing to our wall (and an old hidden chimney zone in our wall down to the concrete ceiling where it seaped down). A new third storm arrived before 10 AM and we held our breath. But it helped.
The pharmacy next door however got dumped with water at that moment when a flat terrace above their backside couldn't hold the water anymore.
The coming hours there was a lot of cleaning in both houses with help back and forth. Jan quickly drove to Ikea to get us a load of plastic boxes as now we wanted to protect all our goods from water in the closed by resorting it in plastic boxes. Unfortunately that reduces the capacity of storage but it looks more structured.
As a result the rest of the day and weekend I spent in an unvoluntary spring cleaning of our goods. Especially the sorting of all pictures was a huge surprising backflash in time. Oh my god, the memories of all my teenage & young adult non digital pictures! Some are lost, but most got saved out of their wet packages. Phew..
some of my schoolpictures between age 3 and 16
No saving for this picture anymore
We assumed our wooden floor and cupboard would start to curl up and would be lost after a few days but ...cross wood...so far those big zones don't show too much damage. We are waiting for the offer from the insurance as some zones are clearly damaged but I think it really could have been a lot worse. I guess our crazy mopping with all possible towels in the house has done its job. And thank goodness for Beertje screaming us awake before it was too late.
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