On September 1, 2021, whatever was left of Hurricane Ida came barreling up through the Northeast, dumping unprecedented levels of rainfall and causing massive flooding in its wake.
But I thought my family had been spared. By 11:30 p.m. the rain had stopped and even though the creek down the hill from my house had been steadily rising all day, the National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Predication Service showed that Perkiomen Creek had plateaued at 20.6 feet (it currently sits 1.25 ft).
Beyond towels
I walked out to my deck, saw the water at the very top of the hill extending as far as my eyes could see in the opposite direction of my house and thought, “This was a little too close for comfort.” Then I felt something cold at my feet and noticed water starting to come up through the bottom of my deck. I returned inside, went about my nightly rituals — turning off the lights, strumming a few quiet chords on the guitar, brushing my teeth — and saw the first spot of water in the house. I threw down some towels, cursed myself for not having a wet vac and turned around to head upstairs when I noticed a few other spots spread out throughout the first floor. Eventually, I spotted one of the sources: The front door. I could see a small stream flowing through a gap in between our double doors.
That’s not good.
After working a 12-hour shift and navigating through the storm and its many road closures, my wife Liz was passed out upstairs. I thought about letting her sleep and deal with everything in the morning, but something told me to wake her up. If Liz hated when I let her sleep through episodes of After Life, I can’t imagine how pissed she’d be if I let her miss out the Discovery Channel reality show that was playing out in the first floor of our home.
By the time we got back downstairs, water was everywhere, ankle deep in some places. We tried to plug the waterfall that had begun to flow through the opening in the doors with my own body and an assortment of household objects — free-weights, footstools, a hutch — something I later learned was the exact opposed of what your supposed to do when your house floods. “You let the water into the house to lessen the pressure and keep the water from damaging the foundation,” my neighbor told me. I pictured myself throwing my doors open wide, gesturing grandly and telling the small tsunami to make itself at home. I’d probably need to be on something stronger than a low dose of melatonin to do that.
There was a distinct moment when the situation switched over from a pain-in-ass inconvenience to a full-blown disaster and for a few moments, my brain flat-out refused to accept what was happening right before my eyes. This can’t be happening right now was a thought that just kept playing on a loop in my head, while my body went into auto-pilot, grabbing anything I thought we couldn’t do without.
In the midst of the trying to figure out what to do next, the power went out and Liz and I retreated to the upstairs where our kids slept soundly. By the time water crept up to the foot of our stairs, we debated waking the kids, climbing out the second floor window and heading to a hotel. But all the roads out of our secluded, dead-end street were closed by this point, so we monitored the flood’s progress up our stairs and kept pushing our evacuation plans a little further back. Our daughter started Kindergarten that week, and all we wanted to do was find a way to give her one normal day before all her routines were changed. (In the end, school was cancelled due to the storm.)
If the water comes up to the first step, we’ll grab the kids and leave through the window. If the water comes up to the second step, we’ll grab the kids and leave through the window. If the water comes up to the third step …
The water eventually stopped on the fifth step. My wife and I spent the bulk of the night listening to the hypnotic swooshing sounds of the newly formed river that flowed right through the first floor of our home. If it wasn’t for the occasional jarring crash of a large object — the kitchen island, the water heater, the bar cabinet — being toppled, the sound would’ve been quite relaxing, like one of the sleep tracks you’d find on the Calm app. Of course, water sounds much more soothing when it’s safely relegated to an iPhone, as opposed to filling the first floor of your home and threatening to rise all the way to where your children are sleeping.
Until around dawn, I went back and forth from our bedroom to the top of the stairs to check the progress of flooding and every time I stood on that landing, a sign on the wall straight ahead mocked me. That sign reads: “Good Things Are Going To Happen.”