Post Morbus

Ominous area downtown where the fireworks were slated to be from a pic a friend sent me

Pre-amble
When I was a child, my uncle told me the story about asking grand-mère Corinne what the biggest technological advancement was that she had experienced in her lifetime. Her answer? Indoor plumbing. Although we are only about 100 years out from the advent of indoor plumbing and sewage systems it was by all measures, a miracle. When she was a child you carried water from a communal well, had an outhouse in your backyard that was cleaned out by a service and basically life in basse-ville was very difficult and very smelly. That story always stuck with me and I have always truly believed that these things were veritable miracles.

The Sitch
Every year we host a drop-in Canada Day party for friends. It is very low-key: bring a snack to share, something if you want to BBQ and come hang out and swim in the pool and chill with friends. Most folks end up hitting the fireworks downtown afterwards and for the most part, it wraps up early. Most years, it also rains. Historically, we generally get an hour’s worth of rain during the afternoon and then the sun comes out and the party goes on. So when it started raining on July 1st, we huddled under the canopy and waited for the rain to stop.

Twas just a sprinkle

We waited. And waited. And waited.

Eventually we all just made the decision to head inside the house because it was raining much harder than it had been in previous years so we figured we’d wait it out in cooler climes. So we took the party inside and I didn’t think much of it until a neighbour knocked on the door and asked, “Are you getting water in your basement?” No. It was all good on our end. The neighbour left, more friends came and we sat around snacking, drinking and chatting in our living room until The Eldest walked by the staircase and said, “Uh Dad, there is water in the basement!”

My friend Uncle Justin and Mr. Tucker headed down to try and locate the entrance of the water as it started to climb rapidly. At that point friends realized that the rain was not subsiding and graciously took their exit. Uncle Justin and Kym ran home to get a pump we could use and then they left to check on his mother. I hopped on facebook to figure out what was happening (spoiler alert: the entire neighbourhood was flooding). When they came back it was then that reports were coming in that the highway and other main arteries were getting flooded with some roads becoming impassable. At this point we had 9.5” of water that reached the top of the stairs as the kids rushed to bring up the harp, the computer and anything of value they could grab while simultaneously piling all of the stuff on the bed from the floor and lower shelves of the book cases. It was wild.

At this point my stepson showed up with his girlfriend and while they were here, his mom called: they had just moved into their new house just days before and ALL of their boxes were piled in the basement. The live in a community adjacent to ours but a lot of the west end of the city appeared to get a lot of flooding. Around that time, the manager of the closest Canadian Tire decided to open on the holiday to allow folks to buy pumps, fans and dehumidifiers. I ordered one for pick up and told my stepson to get his stepdad to rush over and buy one as well.

Mr. Tucker hopped in the car and rushed over to the store and in automatic mode, he took the back roads he usually takes to get there. Unfortunately, they were flooded out so as he drove through, the car died as water entered the engine. So he had to abandon the car and walk the rest of the way to Canadian Tire. There he ran into his son’s stepdad who kindly gave him a ride home[1].

Thus began the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad flood of 2026.

Without going into exhausting detail, it was an AWFUL month. All plans to chill out and enjoy the summer were thwarted and instead it was full of insurance claims, removing our soaked belongings from the basement and then tearing out all of the finished basement. The Eldest is taking it in stride but she is essentially living on a couch in the office until she moves into residence in September. The remediation company luckily came straight away and brought with them a bunch of dehumidifiers. Unfortunately, they discovered tiles under the subfloor (SURPRISE: it’s asbestos!) which they had to remediate as well [2].

In the end, almost 6000 homes logged flooding events with the city. We were lucky: I logged an insurance claim that day and then the next morning I hopped onto the chat and got someone to call me back with info on our adjuster and the name of the remediation company. While I didn’t hear from the adjuster for a few days, the company came within the week and the HVAC shortly after that (our furnace and our hot water tank were both pooched). By the end of the month the asbestos remediation had been done and now we are waiting on a path forward for the rebuild.

We rented a car and had our car towed to the mechanic the next morning. Shockingly, after a week of drying it out and replacing a bunch of parts, it started! I told myself I wouldn’t make an insurance claim unless the cost for the rental and the fix was under $3000 and it was…$2900. In a way, I am grateful because a> I only have $20000 in the car replacement fund; b> I worried that our insurance company would drop us like a hot potato if we claimed both.

TMIL (this month I learned)

A disaster that affects a lot of people is informative: I have always had a good experience making claims with our insurance company and that still stands (so far). During the past month, I have watched people have a variety of experiences with various companies from really great to downright negligent. Many other people had horrific experiences with their insurance companies and so I now know who to avoid. Insurance seems to be one of those things where you can be penny wise and pound foolish. I am not saying you should go with the most expensive option but there are certainly signs that an insurance company isn’t going to make it easy on you. It appears that folks should choose a large company whose sole focus is insurance and if the name is something like “Cheapie Insurance” you may want to avoid it.

If you have a finished basement, get the flooding insurance: My flooding rider was only $56 a year for 1.85M coverage because I live in an area that has a 1/250 year chance of flooding. A woman in my neighbourhood didn’t get the flooding insurance because it was $600 a year due to her proximity to a creek. I ran the numbers and even if it does cost me that much, I would still pay it. Why? Because I suspect the full remediation and rebuild for my basement will be around $100000. If you do the math, if I live in this house for 40 more years it will only cost me $24000 total to have that flooding insurance but I wouldn’t want to risk not having it because…

The bigger the disaster, the fewer contractors there will be: who knew that there would be a run on dumpsters? Not me. Sadly, some folks who had to do the tear out themselves discovered that the insurance companies swooped in and offered most remediation, plumbing, HVAC, dumpster and rebuild construction companies guaranteed work for the next 6 months or so. If you didn’t have flood insurance, you are now at the mercy of who you can find to do the work and there certainly aren’t any deals. Of course, there has been an uptick in scams as well both online and at people’s doors.

Make sure you have as much insurance to pay for the entire rebuild: a lot of folks discovered they only had $5000-$75000 worth of insurance for flooding disasters. If you are an insurance company and you are looking to deploy resources, where are you going to go first? Will you choose the home that maxes out at $50000 or will you choose the home that maxes out at $1M? The answer of course is that $50000 is the top end you will pay in scenario number one and the homeowner is on the hook for the rest, so of course you won’t prioritize it. In our situation where the heat (it was 34C many days in July) and wet causes massive amounts of mould that needs to be remediated, you are going to prioritize the house that can cost you the most to your bottom line. I have no proof that this is the thought process but it seems to me that people online who didn’t have a ton of coverage seemed to be de-prioritized.

Not everything is a conspiracy: I was heartily reminded as to why I stayed off of social media for so long. People are bonkers! Despite the fact that folks were affected in a variety of different neighbourhoods, it didn’t stop folks for blaming extremely niche situations for the flooding. One person even went so far as to suggest that the government was actively pumping water into our neighbourhood to save the highway (what?!). Everyone will blame everything rather than accept the fact that sometimes disasters just happen (also see: climate change! It is happening whether or not you believe in it).

Taxes pay for things: our mayor ran on low taxes. He won. During his tenure he decimated the reserve fund for the city and we are starting to see some deficits. What kills me is that the very same people who voted for him expect white glove service from the city in regards to their flooding. I’ve watched our councillors and MPP desperately trying to get information out as much as possible but in the early days after the event they were still struggling to deploy resources. Instead of thanks for their hard work I have seen relentless whining from folks who somehow expect that a full review of the disaster be undertaken by experts and delivered in under a month. They expect that garbage runs should be 24-7 at their convenience and that complaining on facebook replaces an email to a councillor or logging a ticket with 311. I have seen people do the absolute bare minimum to help themselves while posting daily about how useless all levels of government are. This is not to say that there aren’t valid criticisms to make about all levels of government but the expectations are ridiculous. I am in absolute awe of folks who will post to facebook instead of hitting up the councillor or the city’s website and using the search button – and then complain that “the communication from the city is just awful!”

Miracles become entitlements

Like my great-grand-mère Corinne, I see so much of modern life as pure miracles.

Clean water right from my tap? Miracle!

Electricity to my house? Miracle!

A fridge? A freezer? Miracles!

Heating and air conditioning? Miracles!

A hot shower? …you guessed it! A GD MIRACLE!

But if the power goes out for 5 minutes, people get hysterical and it just boggles my mind. A power station had filled with water and it took a day to drain and people were positively apoplectic about it. No concern for the workers who had to go into the flooded area (because water + electricity is a winning combo), just whining about how inconvenienced they were because they couldn’t watch tv. It was weird watching some of the most privileged people in the world show their entitled asses to the internet. It was – quite frankly – embarrassing (that whinging is for your friends and family, not the whole world!).

Mr. Tucker and I discuss a lot how we are “glass half full” people. Things happen and they suck but we try to appreciate that we have food on the table, a roof over our heads, and even in the event of a disaster such as a flash flood, things are moving along. This isn’t to say I haven’t spent most of the last month teetering on the brink of a breakdown (I have!) but living in a small space when all of the contents of your basement are stacked into boxes in your living room will make anyone squirrely and claustrophobic [3].

But throughout all of this, we managed to go on with life. The kids are both working full time jobs this summer, we are still doing a good job eating our CSA basket every week and not eating out, and The Eldest has been an absolute champ about having to live in the office. I know not having your own space isn’t easy but she has been so gracious about the upheaval. We still need to wait to hear back about the rebuild but until then life is indeed going on.

[1] It’s not weird, we all get along really well.

[2] Yes, I know that if you just leave asbestos and build over it, it’s not dangerous but the water had soaked them and the glue holding them which was starting to flake and so it did need to be removed.

[3] We eventually rented a POD for our driveway and we moved all of the boxes out there. What a mental game changer!