Spent about 6 hours last night running the Shop Vac just to stay ahead of the water flooding my basement. Now, let me make this perfectly clear.....putting this in perspective with what's going on in Memphis and what has occurred in Joplin, this is as significant as a pimple on an elephant's butt. But it is still a very disruptive event for my little family.
It's been raining like crazy in the Detroit area for the past couple weeks. I think the drainage systems are just at capacity now. We had a ridiculously powerful storm yesterday. Expressways and major roads that were not already closed for construction were congested and flooded. I drove through at least 6 or 7 DEEP pools of water on my way home from work. When I got home , one of my kids mentioned seeing "a little water near the basement staircase". When I went down to look, I could see that water was seeping in from the floor drain. One good thing......it was clear (ie, not sewage). The sump pump wasn't running. It was overwhelmed.
So I hooked up the Shop Vac on top of the wash room utility sink so that I could easily dump it when it filled. It's a 14 gallon capacity Shop Vac. I must have filled it a couple hundred times in the 6 or so hours I spent running it. When I went to bed about 1 am, I still had at least 4 inches in the deepest areas.
After a couple hours of Shop Vac, the kids came down and started a bucket brigade. I thought I had been making progress until my 14 year old says "Dad, the water's starting to rise in your room". "My room" is my music room. Home to 6 of my basses, two speaker cabs, two amps, and countless other goodies. Shut off Shop Vac and start Operation Save The Instruments. My 14 yr old, definitely meaning to do the right thing, grabbed both of my Alembics. Just for reference, know that I could probably sell the cheaper of the two for $5,000 without any trouble. Just as I yelled from the wash room "Don't worry about the Alembics, I'll get them", I heard him go "Whoa! That was close". He had slipped on something floating in the water and almost did a face plant with a bass in each hand. Luckily he regained his balance and both basses stayed safe and dry. So now all my gear is spread out all over the house. Worse case scenario, though is that a couple of my hard cases may have gotten a little water logged.
I'm in the process now of calling all the tool rental places to see if I can rent a pump. Long day ahead, I imagine.
