The rain stopped!

Mostly, I'm just re-posting my Facebook stuff -- but with photos.

We have been joined by our friend Monty, who has been living in our place in Dead Man's Flats. DMF is under a mandatory evacuation order as I write this because Pigeon Creek is about to take away some of the buildings (though not ours), but Monty got out last night and got here at 10 PM.

We all spent the day in the basement mopping & shop-vac-ing. We didn't have much mud, but in some places we had to add more water to the floor to make the mud move before we could suck up the yeuch.

Monty on Shop-Vac duty

Virtually 100% of our basement water is now gone. Most the day was sunny and warm, which facilitated us blowing air through the basement to dry it out. Then we pulled all the wet and destroyed baseboard off, and took out the damaged stuff.

Note the warped baseboard behind the desk 

Baseboard gone 

This wallboard just disinigrated 

A real mess in this space

Cleaned of mud and vacuumed -- but still not pleasant

Not much was lost and taken to the front balcony for disposal. An under-bed box we forgot was there, some linens that were in the box and are wrecked, a small chipboard wood filing cabinet that got waterlogged, a bunch of cardboard boxes, etc. I had a guitar in a case that was wet; I thought the case was empty. Bad on my part. I hope to save the guitar. The case has my Jimmy Buffet tour sticker on it. Sentimental value.

Our hot water tank appears to be fine but will not light, so we have no hot water. We ran the hose all day and our water is running clearer all the time, but we're still under a personally implemented "boil water order". Our water's kind of off-yellow anyway.

Everything was great until 5:30 pm, when it started raining again.

Thunderstorms came down from the north west, but the one that hit us was thankfully small. If the water table comes back up, water will start coming in again. I found a short section of basement wall where water is still seeping in, and the sump pump continues to do its thing, god bless it.

Tomorrow, our plan is to rip off damaged wallboard before mould sets in. It already smells musty down there.

I'd like to say things in the area are getting back to normal, but they aren't quiet yet. The area's still a long way from normal. Tonight, you could finally drive east out of Canmore to Calgary, and west out of Canmore to Banff and beyond. But you can only drive away, not into Canmore. The Town of Canmore's under a boil water order. 45+ homes in Canmore along Cougar Creek have been condemned. At 9 PM, they finally allowed folks to move back to the Cougar Creek area. Hundreds are still isolated in Exshaw, and 60% of the houses in that town have been condemned. DMF is still evacuated.

Time. And no rain. Only then will we be back to normal.