Kings River House - Flood

This past week has been devastating in the Southeast regarding weather.  We've had record tornadoes, rainfall, flooding and death related to the severe weather.  We have been so blessed in Fayetteville in all we have had to deal with is flooding and thunderstorms rather than the tornadoes that the rest of the south has been pummeled with so I feel selfish in feeling any sadness over our family weekend home being flooded but it did and it is a special place for our family.

We got a call on Easter Sunday from the developer and neighbor that the Kings River was probably going to come inside the house.  As soon as we got home from Church my Dad and John changed clothes and headed there.  It's only about an hour and fifteen minutes from my parents' house so they were able to arrive quickly and move the critical items out of harms way.  We are very lucky that the main level of the house is on the second level and the first level is simply a "man cave", laundry room and bathroom with some storage and electrical on that level.  The main living areas are on the second and third floors.  Dad and John were mainly concerned about getting the two trout fishing boats up to the road, tie up the canoes and move all of the furniture on the first level and outside up to the second floor.

John and I went up to the house on Monday after work to check on things and this is what we saw when we pulled up.

It was a disturbing site but actually not as bad as we thought it would be!  To give you an idea of how far the river is normally from the house is a picture below:

I took this picture from one of the second floor windows when we were up there at Christmas.  The river is about 5 feet below the ridge in front of Brady, Sarah and John.  (Look at all of those puppy dogs playing!!  Bernie and Caroline were not participating; we normally have 6 puppy dogs) When we pulled up to the cabin the river was at 33 feet and we thought dropping.  While we were there we saw the river drop 4 inches so we were super excited.... well it came up 3 more feet that night apparently.

Outdoor shower and back deck

Looking down the front stairs

Neighbor's house

Looking upstream off of another porch.

All in all we got about 14 inches in the house.  It could have been much worse I'm sure and again, this isn't our primary residence or even the main level of the house.  Neighbors weren't as lucky.  When John and I were there on Monday night neighbors had UHauls on site trying to get as much of their furniture out as possible.  All during this my Dad was traveling on business which I know was frustrating and worrisome for him to not be able to drive up there everyday and check on everything.  

All we have to do now is wait for it to dry out and we'll replace sheetrock and wood trim as well as put new wood down on the interior stairs.  Carroll County does not allow flood insurance so I can't imagine what most people are going to do... 

Here are some pictures of the interior from Christmas time :)

And the final picture is Tara smiling because she thinks she is getting one of Dad's homemade wings... she was not so lucky.

Let's continue to keep all of the people affected in any way by these storms in our thoughts and prayers and hope that this extreme weather is over with for awhile and we can all get back to enjoying spring!

We go from 23 inches of snow to this!  I'm ready for sunny days and mild weather!