Inhuman Swill

It seems absurd for me to say that I wish we were in New York City right now, with Hurricane Sandy bearing down, but we are definitely thinking of all our many friends there and all over the East Coast and hoping everyone stays dry and safe.


Crossposted from Inhuman Swill

or, It's No New Orleans, But It's Ours

I arrived home in Queens last night at about eight, leaving the cab and making my only slightly tipsy way down the way to the backyard. And that's when I heard a most disturbing sound, a good deal louder than the incessant rain itself:

Rushing water.

Like many yards in the region, there were several inches of water in ours:

( The yard this morning, after the water had receded some )

The rushing I heard was water pouring from the yard into the stairwell down to the back basement door under our deck. The water in the stairwell was already up to the middle of my shins.

Laura was out, so I made my way inside, let the delighted dog out back, brought the delighted dog back in, dried her off a bit, cleared the crap piled in front the basement door, and made my way downstairs. Sure enough there was a couple of inches of water in the basement, and the lowest tier of our storage boxes down there were getting soaked. There's also a basement apartment, and while it didn't look like the water was in Charlie's apartment yet, I got the upstairs neighbors going on the task of tracking him down by cell phone.

I called Laura, who advised me to check the drains outside—which had apparently been getting clogged with leaves earlier, though the stairwell had been fine—and promised to come right home. When I got back outside, the water in the stairwell was nearly to my knees:

( The basement door this morning, with high-water mark )

The drain in the stairwell wasn't clogged, just overwhelmed, as was the one on the patio. Laura arrived home shortly and joined me in the task of sorting the wet stuff in the basement from the dry, restacking the dry atop waterproof objects like drink coolers and old air conditioners, and hauling the wet stuff out front in contractor garbage bags. (I also hauled out a huge stack of Charlie's old dry newspapers that had gathered by his apartment door, some dating to 2003.) Among the losses were a whole lot of books, though we tried hard not to look and see which ones they were.

By the time the hauling was done and we both collapsed, the rain had slowed and most of the water in the basement had drained away. If it floods again today, our stuff is likely safe—unless we end up with a foot or more in the basement this time.

We still don't know about Charlie's apartment, though. A friend of his finally reached him by cell phone, only to be told he was working late and couldn't be bothered to leave. I hope he didn't step through his front door into a pool of water, and especially hope he didn't step into a pool of water containing any live electrical equipment. I wouldn't put it past him. He's been known to turn off the power to the entire house when trying to turn a tripped circuit breaker back on.

If there's any truth to the notion that either Hurricane Katrina or 9/11 were punishments visited upon America for her sins, then the sin in question was, in both cases, allowing a clueless, spineless bully like George W. Bush to become president. 2005. 2001. I wonder if he's fiddling with the locks at Versailles as we speak.