Mean water. Warm hearts

During last week's floods, mother nature showed it's power. In it's path, unfortunately was my friend Tim's parent's home.

Here is a link to local news coverage of their house..

A few years ago, the city (or state?) built a retaining wall close by to hold more water in the nearby reservoir(/lake/pond?). What they didn't do was increase the ability to drain more water, so when these rains hit, everything overflowed. Their house that had been rezoned out of flood plains due to this new fancy wall, ended up submerged in a 5 foot pond for 5 days. His parents were in the house as the water quickly rose, and were very luck to make it out alive.
5 days after the flooding, the water finally receded so they were able to return. The water was a muddy mess, and mold has already started to take over.
As much as it was fulfilling to help out at Barton Springs to clean a pool yesterday, this morning's work was 100 times more fulfilling.

What amazed me the most was how about 20 kind souls: family, friends and friends of friends came out to lend a helping hand.
Almost everything is a loss. They have been in the house since 74(ish) so they have plenty of memories, photo albums of kids, and so much more. Tim and his dad run their family business out of the house, and all paperwork, computers and all electronics was under water.
I can't begin to tell you how bad it smells in there from the stagnant flood waters. : (

(Click on both photos to see a larger version.)




People were put on different jobs. Some worked all morning carrying out soaked furniture some carried out mementos, clothing, everything has to come out.
Personally, I didn't think to wear old jeans, so along with 3 others in shorts, we were put to the job of cleaning(sanitizing) salvageable stuff. Ceramics, old china, photos, DVDs, bowls, tons of stuff. I went and got some tarps and we spent the entire morning, cleaning mud off stuff, then dunking it or rinsing it in bleach water, then rinsing it with the water hose, then laying it out to dry. After we did that from 8am till noon, once all was dry, we moved to packing everything into boxes.



All this time, others cleaned out the garage, the rooms, the kitchen, everything must be brought out. An entire trash container with stinky furniture was filled. All furniture being broken down, into pieces. Another container has arrived.
The daughter, Debbie, was responsible of taking a photo of every single thing that came out of the house and deciding if they want us to clean it, or if it was getting trashed.
I can't imagine the emotions going through Tim, his dad, his sister and Tim's uncles and other family members helping out.

To top off the greatness in people willing to lend a hand, my friend Shorey's mother showed up at noon with enough food, cookies, and drinks to feed an army. So incredibly generous of her. I'm speechless.

There's talk of potentially asking for volunteers again on Saturday morning to continue doing whatever is needed. If you care to help out, let me know and I'll put you on the list... Manual labor, heavy and non-heavy, volunteering to donate cleaning supplies, food for volunteers, and all types of other stuff like donating rags, packing supplies, etc.

I know I'll be there.