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.