FUN (Billy & Nancy)

We are just able to get back online having been without power since Floyd
came through. Last week, we had a tremendous thunderstorm that fried our
voice mail/fax system. It was about 5 years old and it would cost 10 times
as much as the original cost to replace it with something similar, so we
opted to go with a regular answering machine and a fax machine as
replacements. Our computers were all fine since they each have battery
backup/surge protectors.

Then Floyd came through and knocked out our power and knocked down three
pine trees (two were over 70 feet tall) in our backyard. One came close to
our house! With no electricity, the sump pump stopped running, and with 10
inches of rain coming down, we were hoping the power would come back soon.
No such luck. After about an hour, it was obvious the basement would flood.
The kids pitched in and worked like champs to move the most important books
and papers to higher ground, but we soon had 5,000 gallons of water in the
basement (even in a crisis you can find time to learn about calculating
volume).

I went out to a boating supply store and got a bilge pump (runs off 12
volts) and rigged it up to our car battery to start pumping out the
basement. It was rated at 750 gallons per hour, but having to take the water
up 5 feet to a hose through the basement window dropped the rating to about
400 gph. That meant it would take about 12 hours to pump out the basement.
Radio reports indicated that power might be out until Tuesday! We had worked
into the early morning, and just as we were about to go to bed, the power
came back on! The regular sump pump soon got rid of the deepest water, and I
used a shop vac to start getting rid of the rest. We were down to no
standing water and just saturated carpeting. We took time to put together a
couple of orders that we had promised would be shipped out that day, and
just as we printed the last label, the power went out again. UPS requires
computer generated labels, so we can't ship UPS orders without electricity.

I was worried that after working so hard to get rid of the standing water
that the basement was going to flood again. I hooked my jury rigged bilge
pump up again and since it was no longer raining (it was actually pleasantly
cool and sunny) the bilge pump was easily able to keep up with the water
coming into the sump well from the saturated ground. We were very happy to
get up this morning and find that the power was back on. I'm hoping it will
stay on now!

We're sore from bailing water and hauling wet stuff out of the basement.
I'll be making several trips to the dump this weekend. We also discovered
that unlike our old voice mail/fax system, the new setup did not retain
messages when the power went out. I've since replaced the answering machine
with one that does.

****
If anyone left an order on our answering machine in the last few days,
please call or e-mail us to confirm that we got it. If you called and didn't
get through at all, please try again.
*****

We will probably be too busy the next few days to check in with the list, so
that's why I'm taking time now to post this long update (not to mention that
it helps delay loading up the van for the first trip to the dump). We're
considering this our trial run for a worst case scenario of any Y2K
problems!

We are safe and sound and hope all other list members were unaffected by
Floyd.

Billy

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