The Time to Prepare is Over!

Do you remember the day I said that I would write soon about my adventures of hurricane Sandy...yeah it was a while ago.  Well, better late then never. 

"The time to prepare is over.  The time to take shelter is now."  Those were the words my roommate and I heard as we were trying to decide if we should go out and get some actual supplies before the hurricane hit Annapolis.  The night before my roommate bought some pretzels and some buffalo chips and I bought a case of bottled waters.  Now, we had heard that the way the hurricane was going to hit would not flood Annapolis, but what we worried about was the power going out.  We needed to buy some type of food that would stay fresh, and as I said before, we did not get the best supplies. 

The day the hurricane was expected to make landfall, Eric was listening to clips about Sandy on YouTube.  We did not have a t.v. to watch the news, but we had Internet, and all of a sudden Eric starts laughing hysterically.  "What is it?", I say, and he says to come and look at the YouTube clip.  It was a map of the east coast and how hurricane Sandy was expected to hit land.  The eye of the storm was highlighted in red, and as I watched the storm move I could not help but burst out laughing myself.  It showed the eye of the storm going right over our little town of Arnold (right outside of Annapolis).  Of course, I was concerned about not having enough supplies, so I ask Eric "Should we get some more supplies?", and I swear, as soon as I finished, a women on YouTube says, "The time to prepare is over.  The time to take shelter is now."  It was about 3pm and the hurricane was expected to hit at 9pm.  The store was a block away, and the rain was not too bad.  We got in the car and drove to the store. 

All of the water bottles were gone, but luckily I had gotten those already.  Now, Eric and I still didn't know what to get so we decided on the essentials, Oreo cookies, chips and salsa, sweet tea, and some turtle cookies to bake.  They had chocolate, pecans, and caramel.  We looked into our basket, and we both felt that we did not have enough supplies.  We wondered what we should get, and finally one of us had a great idea.  We would get some ready to eat fried chicken.  Yeah, now we were ready to checkout!  We buy our supplies and drive back to our house, and as soon as we get there I put the cookies in the oven and we start eating our chicken. 

It all seemed like a good idea at the time, and as we slowly, OK quickly, ate our supplies we got bored and took out my Risk board game and started playing Risk. I bet you did not know that risk has two player rules.  After we finished game one, we remembered that the downstairs had flooded from storms before, so we went downstairs to check it out.  You guessed it, there were a couple of puddles.  There was a large puddle in the utility room and another smaller puddle in the bathroom. We mopped both of them up, and we put a bucket next to the wall in the utility room with a little towel touching the wall, so that the towel would soak up the water, and the water would fall into the bucket.  Yeah, that works.  The water was leaking through the walls in both rooms, but there was drywall in the bathroom, so we could not get to the walls and there was no way to stop the water.  All we could do was put a towel to soak up the water. 

 

The reason why water was coming into the house was, because we live in a townhouse where all of the houses are connected.  Our house is in the middle and there happens to be a little hill in our front yard, so when it rains the water builds up in front of our house and there is no way for the water to runoff.  Eric and I tried to figure out how to get rid of all the water before it all came into our house.  It was about 5:30pm and starting to rain harder.  Gallons of water had built up in front of our house, and a hurricane was coming.  The only thing we could think to fix the problem was to build a trench in our front yard. 

Now, please understand that after years of focus missionaries living at this house no one had ever fixed the flower bed, and after about seven years of weeds I came and pulled out the weeds, planted some roses, and laid some mulch.  Now I had to tear it up to build this trench.  It was either the flower bed or the house, so we dig a trench on one side of the house. 

 

We go inside, and the power goes out.  It was about 6pm.  Three hours before the hurricane hits.  We take flashlights down stairs to see if the leaking had stopped in the basement and it had.  We checked the bathroom, and it was not too bad, so we decided to go up and play some more Risk by candle light (One of those good things about being Catholic is that you always have candles.). 


When we finished the game we went down stairs to check on the bathroom, and we found a huge puddle of water.  Eric mopped it up (We only have one mop.), and immediately another puddle started to form.  The water was coming in, and we could not stop it.  At about 9pm, when the hurricane was hitting Arnold, Eric and I went outside to dig a second trench.  It was raining, and the wind was blowing at about 60 mph, but we dug that trench, and saved the house.  The trenches worked, and the water stopped coming in.  We sat down and played a third game of Risk.  The next morning our power came back on, and the storm was gone.  We survived our first hurricane.  Thank you for all of your prayers. 



P. S. Here is the picture of Max that I promised.  Blog spot finally let me add some more pictures to my post's.