Sometimes we wonder if we are somewhat cursed as a family. Whenever our life seems to just become a bit better, disaster strikes us at the most inopportune time. We strive to overcome these setbacks and eventually we do but it takes a lot out of us and we wonder how further ahead in life we would be if these things do not happen.
Friday Evening
So it was on a Friday evening just three days before Andrea was due to enter the hospital to give birth to Patrick and I was sitting down in the living room reading my paper while Andrea took a bath upstairs. A few minutes later, Madeleine came downstairs to wish me good night but she greeted me with not a smile but an expression of horror. I could not understand what she was trying to say bu then she grabbed me by the arm to show me what she saw.
Turning the corner to the hallway between the foyer and the living room, I saw what she saw and what she walked through. Before us was a deep and spreading pool of raw sewage that was coming from the downstairs half bathroom. Our toilet had seemingly exploded.
I knew there was no time to waste so I went to the garage to get the shop vac to start sucking up the sewage. I must have sucked up 40-60 gallons of sewage and depositing it outside. The affected area was large and everywhere.
After getting the immediate situation under control, I put in a call to the local Roto Rooter to send someone out. My thought was that the whole problem was a clogged drain and when Andrea drained her bath, the water had nowhere to go but out of the downstairs toilet. So a quick run with the drainage snake to break up the clog would take care of the cause of the problem is not the aftermath.
So the plumber came out, checked that the clog was not on the city line thus was on my property. We went down to the basement garage to where the clean out valve was located. We positioned garbage cans around the valve to catch the outflow of sewage when the valve was released and believe me, it was a lot of sewage that came out. Pushing the cans out of the way, the plumber looked down the pipe and did not like what he saw.
He did not see a clog or obstruction down the pipe. What he did see was that the pipe had broken clear off from the outside pipe to the city line. Dirt from the ground above had settled into the area where the pipe should have outflowed and this was the obstruction that blocked the flow.
The plumber told me that the problem was outside of his means to fix and that I would need a specialist plumber to fix the problem. He said that if the problem required to dig up the pipe with a backhoe, the expense could run into the thousands of dollars. In any event, I could not use the plumbing in the house except for emergencies until the problem was fixed.
So here was my problem. I had no plumbing. My wife was supposed to go to the hospital in three days. I had to travel to South Carolina the next day to pick up Andrea’s mother to bring back to Winston-Salem.
Saturday morning
Despite the events of the night before, I decided I need a good rest to take on the day. My first call of the day was to my insurance company to put in the claim. They mentioned to me that they had on retainer, companies that specialised in disaster recovery such as home flooding. Then I put in a call to a friend of the family who is a contractor for some advice on dealing with this situation. He did give some advice but then also volunteered to come over to give Andrea some assistance on this matter while I was on the road.
With plans in motion, I set out for South Carolina. I did not want to do the road trip with so much to do at home but Andrea wanted her mother to be with her for the birth.
So our friend came over and started the process of removing carpet and vinyl flooring. A little later, the disaster recovery team continued the process as well as bringing in dryer to start removing the moisture in the plywood flooring and spraying all surfaces with anti-bacterial agents. The dryers were to be in the house all weekend and they were incredibly noisy. As well, it was advised to Andrea that since she was pregrant, it was not advisable to be in the home during this time. As we had no plumbing in any event, we knew we had to go to a hotel that night.
Saturday Evening
Like I mentioned before, we seemed to be afflicted with more than our share of bad luck. Looking for a hotel room proved more of an ordeal than we imagined because this was the weekend that the Furniture market was taking place in High Point and consequently, hotel rooms all over the Triad were booked solid. Mind you, I was still on the road when all of this was happening. I kept in touch with Andrea on the day’s progress via cellphone so I could not help her in figuring out where to find a hotel. She had to use the old fashioned Yellow Pages. Eventually, she was able to find a room on the North Side of town so I had to gather all of the family together including Andrea’s mother, luggage and other accessories when I arrived back in Winston late that night. It was about 9:30 that evening that I was able to settle down and relax.
So it was a most trying 24 hours that we experienced in our lives. But it was only the start of things for us.