After the flood
This morning, I returned to my apartment for the first time since the flood. I’d been staying with my friends Krys and Ted in Bayonne, because they had heat and hot water, and I didn’t. Plus, they were willing to take the ferrets in, which was awfully kind of them.
Now, the water didn’t threaten my apartment at all, but my garage was a different story. I’d kept my extra games (the ones I didn’t have room for in the apartment) and all sorts of personal effects in the garage. The games were in fairly waterproof buckets, while the effects were in plain cardboard boxes stacked on top of the buckets. The idea was that if the water got up as far as waist-high, the game buckets would be underwater, but they’d keep the games dry, and the boxes would never touch the water.
When I opened the garage door, I didn’t know what to expect. Would water come sluicing out? Would everything be just as I left it?
It turns out the tidal power of the water had been more powerful than I’d expected, and the boxes had been thrown all over the place into the water. There were a few things I lost that I wish I didn’t, like my old collection of baseball cards. But I didn’t lose anything life-threatening.
Oh, and the games. I wasn’t expecting to be able to salvage anything, but it turns out that the games are dry as a bone! Most of them, anyway. One of the game buckets opened, and I lost a couple of out-of-print games (for those in the know: among the games I lost were Betrayal at House on the Hill and, ironically, Survive).
It took a few hours to clean out the drenched effects from the garage, but I got a lot of help from generous folks in maintenance and my neighbors. Right now, the garage floor has been bleached and squeegeed dry, and the door is open to let it air out. Mold within the wall isn’t too much of concern, since the walls are rock and concrete.
So now I’m chilling at home for the first time in a couple of days. Man, it feels good.
