Thanks all got your supportive And helpful comments.
A bit of the back story and a brief update.
We live on a river, the Chippewa about .5 miles downriver from the
confluence with the Pine River, about two miles upriver from the confluence
with the Tittibawasee which then joins the Saginaw river and flows into Saginaw
Bay which is an appendage of Lake Huron. Between them, the Pine, Chippewa, and
Tittibawasee drain a very large watershed. Basically flat country, meandering
rivers. We look south over a large bend in the Chippewa, and about a mile to
our north the Tittibawasee roughly parallels the Chippewa the two getting
closer and eventually merging at downtown Midland.
10-12 days ago ( I am loosing track!) a low pressure system parked over
the region and dumped many inches of rain. The hydro section of our National
Weather Service predicted a rise of the Tittibawasee up to X feet at their
river gauge. From past experience I knew that X height would mean approximately
26-28 inches of water in our garage, but said garage is 30” below the level of
our single level home, so no big deal. We moved the car etc from the garage to
higher levels according to a long developed and tested plan.
Then Tuesday a week ago came the big oopsie. The Tittibawasee has
several small dams not too far upriver from town. They hold back enough water
to create recreational lakes but also allow the owner to generate/sell hydro
power. One failed, (predictably given the owners record), the next one
downstream was failing, the predicted crest was now about five feet higher. Of
the roughly 40,000 persons in our town, 10,000 (including us) were issued
immediate evacuation notices. We grabbed a few things and headed for higher
ground 20 miles west. Not too long after that the East-west road behind us
closer to town was closed due to water over the road. Two days later we came
back to our home. The good news was that the second dam partially held, enough
to slow the flow somewhat, and the eventual crest was only a bit over the
historic high, which for us meant only 27 3/8 inches of water in the house.
“ONLY” that much as worst case would have been another 2 feet higher, or more.
Enough for today, I’ll continue with update tomorrow... Slowly recovering, it
will be weeks or months.
Stan
Sent from my iPad
> On May 27, 2020, at 10:49 AM, Paul Sorenson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> So sorry to hear this, Stan. Hopefully your insurance will come through and
> soon life can return to some normalcy.
>
> With regard to your photos/images in whatever form you can recover them -
> over the years I've lost possession of a multitude of images. The flowers,
> landscapes, etc all invoke memories of good times but they are all pretty
> esoteric and can be replaced with other pretty pictures. Those I regret
> losing the most, and would be the first to be saved during a culling, are the
> people pictures - the ones that would show future generations who we were and
> how we lived.
>
> -p
>
>> On 5/26/2020 9:33 PM, Stan Halpin wrote:
>> As some of you know, our home was flooded last week, high water at 27 3/8
>> inches inside.
>> So we have been hauling stuff out, a lot to the curb for trash pickup, much
>> still to be sorted, decisions about what to try to preserve/restore...
>> [Side note. Most of my camera gear was high and dry, my computer also, my
>> five backup external drive all had water inside which I poured out. We’ll
>> find their fate sometime but not now.]
>>
>> So, sitting tonight going over tomorrow’s schedule and priorities. I mention
>> that I want to tackle the 15-20 binders that hold my sleeved negatives and
>> contact prints and selected proof prints. Meg says: “why? Why keep those?
>> Will you ever use them?” Hmm, well Meg, you have been after me to print a
>> few flower macros and most of my favorites were with the 645. I suppose I
>> could go back to using a 645Z and go off looking for flowers. Meg says:
>> “That would make more sense than trying to recover those thousands of
>> negatives just to find and produce 5 prints.”
>> I think she has a point. Particularly if it turns out that my digital
>> archives are also toast.
>>
>> Starting next Monday a professional cleaning crew of 5-6 persons will spend
>> 3-4 days mitigating the flood damage, sanitizing, and cleaning. Another 2
>> weeks after that of high powered fans for drying. Meanwhile we’ll be looking
>> for new stove, refrigerator, furnace/boiler, hot water heaters, washer and
>> dryer, bedroom furniture, living room furniture... Assuming that our
>> insurance coverage comes through, by July this will mostly be behind us and
>> I can revisit that thought about a 645Z...
>> Thought for the day: avoid floods.
>>
>> Stan
>>
>> Sent from my
>>
>>
>>
> --
> Paul Sorenson
> Studio1941
>
> Sooner or later "different" scares people.
>
>
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