Waiting, after the flood

It’s funny that the last column I wrote for Wawatay was about staying strong as a family and keeping my son safe. I wrote about his photos on the walls and how his toys are everywhere.
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and everything is gone. There are no pictures on the walls right now; in fact the walls have been torn down. His toys are in garbage bags sitting on the front lawn of our East End address – we are victims of the flood that took place in the early hours of May 28 2012 in Thunder Bay. We lived in a sub-level basement apartment. All of our neighbors awoke to four feet of water in their basements while ours topped off at just over two feet of brown, murky sadness.
We are okay, a little possession-less and holed up in the spare room at my mother’s apartment, but at least we had a place to go. We will probably be staying here for the next few weeks before we can move back into the apartment – it is currently being “gutted” and dried out. There is nothing left in there, anything that touched the bacteria-laced water had to go. Contractors are rebuilding the place, so it will be like new when it is time to go back home.
Unfortunately we did not have renter’s insurance. I was told to file a claim with the city on what was lost but now I’ve heard that they want serial numbers and photos and details on how old the items lost were. I didn’t get that information off my appliances and belongings as I was scrambling to get my son out quickly to avoid being electrocuted. There are plenty of photos of the damage done, but will a photo do?
I don’t know that right now.
Somewhere between 1,000 and 3,000 homes in Thunder Bay were affected by the heavy rainstorms and sewage back-up that flooded the sleeping city.
Damages range anywhere from slightly damp due to rainwater to entire basements and homes destroyed by full-on human-waste.
A family in the East End actually had to vacate their home because the walls were starting to cave in and their house was condemned.
Folks are arguing that the incident shouldn’t be referred to as a “flood” because it was the sewage treatment plant that failed and the flooding was not natural. Maybe that’s why the city has declared itself a disaster area in order to access relief funds from the province; to take some of the brunt of the millions it will cost to have everything back to normal again.
I really miss what normal was for us, routine-wise anyway.
I am so thankful that we are in good health and made it to a safe place, though. I am also blown away by how the community really opened their hearts to the victims of the disaster, especially the volunteers who worked day and night at St. Peter’s Church in East End. I learned of the church after I joined a flood assistance group on Facebook to find out where I could find some help for my son since he lost everything. The Canadian Red Cross has since taken the reigns from the church for disaster-relief.
So now it is just a waiting game.
Wait for the apartment to be brought back to life, wait for the claim for the uninsured I submitted to be assessed, wait on more news updates from the city, and wait for normalcy to return.
And if our apartment is ever flooded again, I will be forced to build a home modelled after those in Cambodia that are high off the ground.