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  • From: Lisa Perry <lkvp AT floydva.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] A raging flood
  • Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 11:03:03 -0400

Tvoivozhd wrote:

We are in the middle of a raging flood equalled only by the 1985 flood---all our buildings are above the flood plain---not much but sufficiently.

Sounds like Giles County was hit worse than Floyd County. Our driveway is there, but washed down to underlying 1 and 2 ft quartz bolders on the left-hand side, fortunately there was room to drive up towards the right-hand side. Usually the waterbars at the top of the drive do a good job, but this morning we could see they were plugged full of fallen leaves-- and last night from 3:00 a.m. on it just pelted rain. I think we got more rain than I heard mentioned on the radio. Wasn't this storm supposed to head in a more northeast direction? Seems like it headed north-northeast.
The dirt floor in the barn was muddy soup this morning, we had the lawn mower and other equipment up on pallets and they just escaped the water. What a mess.

Our root cellar 'basement' under our existing house took in 5-6" of water. We'll be using the wet/dry shop vac we bought and used for the aftermath of hurricane Frances, when we took in 5". We're concerned about mold. The good news is that the new basement under the addition stayed dry.

We still had power when we left home. Last weekend we lost power for 56 hours from hurricane Ivan. I had the tub and several pots filled with water--just incase.

Clearly, we have some work to do on improving our road and land to be better prepared for the next onslaught of rain or severe storm. Part of homesteading, and should be added to the survival list that Tvo and Gene made if it isn't on it already, is protecting your investment! I suppose that goes without saying. We're concerned about the root cellar, we're going to have to put on bulkheads around the windows and build up the soil and whatnot--to direct the water away. It is a dirt floor old-fashioned root cellar/basement, so some of the water comes in no matter what you do. It was dry as a bone when we bought the house--but then our area had been in the fifth year of a five-year drought.

A major secondary black-top road we use to get to work everyday was flooded over at a low point--best guess was up to 3' deep. We turned around and went the long way.

The irony to us (my husband and I) is that we moved to sw VA, in the Appalachians, from Charleston SC five years ago--and we picked this area (after research) because it was more protected from the weather. This area seemed to experience less extreme weather and had all four seasons. Now we're dealing with storms that are hurricane-related even though we moved to the mountains. Go figure.

Lisa
living in soggy Floyd County, VA






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