The flood

The night before the flood I could tell that a big storm was coming because I sleep with my porch door open and I had to tie it to the railing to keep the strong wind from slamming it shut. At about 9:45 p.m. it was only lightly raining. But the wind was so strong and put so much pressure on my door that it broke the wire loose and woke me up about 2:30 a.m.. I went out on my porch and retied the wire. By that time it was pouring.

In the morning I went downstairs and fixed myself some breakfast. I looked out again and right at the corner where the creek makes a turn the water was just barely spilling over, but it still had a ways to go before it was in our yard.

Later I looked out the window and saw that the water had started flowing into the yard very slowly but rising quickly. I walked into the game room, looked around and saw no water so I walked over to the garage door to see if it had a lot of water in it. Just as I got there water started pouring in all around the soor, so I quickly started rolling up the rug and yelled to Sarah and Katy. We pulled the rug out and started moving everything off the floor and first shelf.

I walked around outside in about half a foot of water to look at the cars and saw that the rear end of each of them was submerged. I yelled to Mom to get them out (if they stayed a minute more they would have stalled). So Mom drove the Volvo and I drove the jeep up to MTS parking lot and then came back.

The water had risen in the gameroom so we moved everything up another shelf and went upstairs. I started a fire and tried to dry out. We'd been moving stuff up out of the game room for about half an hour and I was frozen. I soaked my feet in cold water and it felt warm.

As we watched out the window the water rose and knocked down the retaining wall across the street. We watched a lot of flourescent light tubes, a crib, almost 2 cords of wood, ladders, and other various items float out of our garage and down into the creek across the street. The bridge was now gone except for the top of the poles at either end. During this whole time, we could not call out, we had no hot water, no heat (except by fire), no electricity and hardly any food. By Jeff Wood, 15

When we got home from school at 8:20 (there wasn't school) the water was flowing into our garage. The power was already off; it went off at about 8:00. My dad called and told me to start bringing things upstairs because he knew what was going to happen.

I went outside to see what it was like. The current was getting pretty strong and it was waist deep. The cars stopped coming through Shady Lane about 10 or 15 minutes after that. By then, our garage was filled and the bikes were almost submerged unter water. I went back inside and continued saving things in the gameroom.

Later I went upstairs to take a shower, but there wasn't any hot water.

The current outside was really strong.

Jeff was taking millions of pictures. Mom and I spent the night peeling apart , blotting, and drying pictures and negatives that my mom wanted.

Since there wasn't any heat, we slept in the living room in sleeping bags in front of the fire. By Sarah Wood, 14

It was raining when my mom took me to school. There were puddles all over the streets. I had no school. When I got home my brother and sisters didn't have school either. We started rolling up the rug that was in the game room. Just after my mom and my brother put it upstairs the water poured in. The highest it got in there was about six feet.

We didn't have any electricity so we used candles. There were people in a canoe going down the street and they turned over and almost got washed away. It was like the whole town was a river and we were on a houseboat.

My father had to stay in the city where he works because there was no way to get home.

When the water went down, about three days after, our gameroom floor was very muddy. We had to shovel all of the mud out of our garage. We also have to mop the muddy floors. It was a yucky flood. By Katy Wood, 11