Monsoon Floods House

The monsoon arrived last night. We woke up around 1:30am to a major thunder and lightning storm. The rain was coming down in torrents. We lied awake and listened to the storm and watched the lightning for at least 45 minutes. When it started to quiet down I went to get out of bed and that’s when I found my feet in three inches of water.

What a feeling! We got up and realized that the balcony off our bedroom wasn’t draining. Well, it was draining – through the door and into our bedroom. The whole floor was flooded and it was threatening to go into the hall and down the stairs. Michael went out to try to unclog the drain outside and I started mopping the floor.

We phoned the property manager who said he would send someone in the morning. Of course we said no, he had to send someone right away. In fact, the water had started to seep through the walls into the living room.

There was so much water on the balcony that Michael couldn’t find the drain and I wasn’t getting far with the mopping. Did I mention the electricity was out? Thank goodness we brought our headlamps – they’ve really come in handy.

No one came and so we phoned the property manager again – big surprise, his phone was turned off. Michael got ahold of someone else who said to try the maintenance people at our complex. Out he went in the rain and found someone who could come soon – after they unplugged a drain at another house.

We started moving furniture in the living room. The floor was getting really wet. And Michael started dumping water over the balcony with a pot. Finally a guy came and brought a big long pole and was able to unclog the drain.

The floor was still flooded but there wasn’t much else we could do. Went back to bed and then we heard the mosquitoes buzzing around. On came the flashlight, and Michael became “Mosquito Man,” swatting, missing, swatting, killing. The mosquitoes were winning. He finally had the brilliant idea to put on mosquito spray and we settled in for an hours sleep before the kids had to get up for school (yes, on Saturday but that's another story).

We got the kids on the bus and then went back to bed till 10:30. The property manager finally arrived just after that and we convinced him that he had to get someone in today to clean up the water. Took a couple hours but he and someone’s maid cleaned it up. We got the electricity back on and the internet has been intermittent.

As for the water damage, we’ll worry about that next week. Luckily nothing much of ours was damaged, just our new bedspread. And we will have pest control in on Monday to get rid of mosquitoes and anything else that may have gotten in.

They were the best of days, they were the worst of days...