Basement water problem...

Yes indeed, it's 4:36AM and I am just getting home. My body hurts, my eyes are shot, and I have body parts sticking to each other.

Tonight the Twin Cities experienced an incredible amount of rainfall. Most areas recieved a minimum of 5 inches, some areas in upward of 9 inches, and most of this coming in a 3.5 hour period. I was in class this evening from 6:00-10:15PM, and when I got out of class, I discovered I had a voice mail. It was a frantic and distraught fiancee in her near tears voice explaining that her power was out, the basement was flooding, her cell phone was dieing, and she was bailing water as fast as she could. The message was 45 minutes old, and it was still raining at a 2 inch per hour rate (very heavy). I hustled home on my bike in the rain, changed clothes, packed a bag with dry clothes back ups, grabbed some flash lights and hit the road. Banana's house is a 30 minute drive in good conditions, and tonight it raining quite hard, with significant amounts of water on the road and pooling in low spots. I skirted a deep part getting onto Hwy. 36, but there was a car stalled in 2.5+ feet of water 10 feet away. Thankfully I drive a truck, and saw the water and was able to go slow through it. So I hydroplaned my way to her house to find Banana and her parents trying to divert water, adjust down spouts and gutters, and clean up from the water that had been enter the basement. I was able to disassemble the downspouts and get them unplugged, as well as reallocate some longer segments to the area where the water was coming in the house to move water farther away from the house. This all done in heavy rain, by flashlight, and lightning. We then empted out the room where the water was coming in (where all my stuff is stored of course!), moving two beds, dressers, plus lots of my personal stuff. We pulled up the carpet, and moved it to the garage so that when power would come back on we could put fans on it and dry it out. I determined the padding was shot (as well as saturated) so we pulled that up as well. It was glued to the floor with a water soluable glue, which means that much had loosed up, but not all of it, and every square inch of the floor of the room is covered in a slippery yellow goo, that becomes VERY sticky when it begins to dry. I pulled all the padding, a process which moved much of the goo from the floor to my feet, legs, arms and hands. It's weird having all your toes stuck together. It makes it harder to walk. I now know why ducks walk funny. We then mopped up what water we could, sponged up a good bit more, and used the wet-vac to dry out other areas of carpet that aren't removable.

At 2:30AM we realized we hadn't eaten supper, so we ran and got some grub at Taco Bell. Not good, not healthy, but it was open to 3:00AM. We then ran to Wal-Mart with hopes of buying a box fan to help the dry out process, but they have already sent those back to store houses. So that was my night, and I have to go to work in the morning. It's going to be a long day.