It was bad, yet could have been even worse.
We had installed glass block windows in the basement several years prior to the flood and I think that was what saved us from a total loss; the water was just inches below the entry level of our home and the glass block windows did not fail.
Some of the homes around here had old glass windows that failed and they had water completely fill their basements.
I was somewhat lucky in that I had a few large water pumps and was able to get them going durring the flood, but they only slowed the rising water level.
The water was coming into the basement through the main house drain, not through any leaks in the foundation.
In the end the water level got to about 4' deep and everything below that line was a total loss except for, and this was sort of funny, a very sad looking Mali Uromastyx rescue I had in a open top enclosure. She was floating on a chunk of wood I had provided her to bask on.
At the time of the flood we had a pretty giant collection, with the most painfull loss being 90 adult breeding Anolis vermiculatus I have no idea how many eggs and hatchlings died other than it was all of them, 12 ackie monitors, all of the incubators were flooded.
We lost nearly all of the ground geckos which were kept in 5' tall racks, the racks themselves were home built melamine and were a total loss too.
The bug room was hit very hard, I kept the heavy colonies low to the floor and the lighter new colonies up high, so that left me with very little to work with in terms of feeders for the survivors and a stint with serious cricket breeding, yipee.
Lets see, all of my bagged bug food was soaked, we have a local mill do our final mixing, grinding, and bagging 2000lb minimum per run, we were less than halfway into the last batch.
So yes it sucked pretty bad, we sold most of our higher end stuff to help fund the clean-up and rebuilding of everything. It's a long process, the bugs are just shy of one generation away from being where we were at pre flood.
I feel lucky that in the whole experience my family was never displaced and that my wifes income is more than enough to keep us well above water (pun fully intended).
Not having the extra income sucks, the reptiles, bugs, and insect food I sold were paying for themselves and giving back enough for us to be able to put away money every year that was going to end up funding a nice state of the art reptile centered petshop.
So yeah, it was what it is, your on top of the world one day and an hour later your right back at square one.
Maurice Pudlo
