Amen. We weren't home while it was storming, but I remember telling my wife at the time on our way home, "I wonder if the drain was able to handle all of that"? As soon as we got home I opened the door to the basement, flipped the light switch, and saw one of our magazine baskets floating around in what looked like 10 feet of water! I felt like crying. It's funny how it can create such an optical illusion. I called my dad and told him I had four or five feet of water standing in my basement. But when it was all said and done and we'd gotten all of the water out we measured the water line on the wall and it was just under 12 inches. Still, a foot of water is a TON of liquid to have to clean up... expecially when it has turds floating around in it.
The three of us on the end of the street that all found out we didn't have flood insurance got together and tried to get the city to throw us at least SOMETHING since the public sewer had failed. But we each got a letter from the city attourney saying that the city wasn't liable because they had adequate sewage. It wasn't 7 or 8 months after that incident that the headlines in our local paper was, "Inspector Determines Richmond Will Have To Spend 40 Million To Bring Current Sewer System Up To Acceptable Standards". The article went on to explain how everytime they built a new housing complex or expanded a neighborhood they failed to do the necessary changes to the sewer lines to compensate for it. My neighbors and I weren't surprised by this at all, we saw first hand the evidence of the problem.
Oh well, life goes on.
