Flood Damage Revisited

You remember how my parent's house flooded in the spring and how mom's ceramic business was flooded.
She is finally assessing the damage. The farm needed to be cleaned up and set back in order first. And then the garden needed to dealt with. Now she has time to haul all of her damaged molds out of the basement and catalogue them for insurance purposes. What a monumental job. What you see below is a small sample of the molds that she had damaged during the flood.
As you can see they are stacked quite deep along the garage. I was surprised at how much damage the water did to them. The detail on some of them was really eroded. You could even see where the rubber straps had prevented the water from coming in contact with the plaster as it was the only place on the outside of some of them that was not worn away.

The insurance company wants her to list all of the molds that were damaged by the flood, when and where she purchased them, and their current replacement value. So while she is recovering from her surgery (she has been told to not lift anything heavier than a cup of tea!) she is attempting to put all of her molds in order by hunting up current price lists (you should see the stack of papers that cover that!) and looking for approximate dates of purchases. Some she knows, but others are a little harder to find. A lot of her papers were in the flood too. She is doing a lot of detective work by looking through stacks and stacks of receipt books for the first mention of some of the more elusive molds.

What a job!

Update

Mom left a comment after "A View from the farm" detailing what has been done and what is left.

Here it is


Well folks, the clean up at the farm is coming along just fine. We have the milk house, the office, the bathroom, the milking parlor, the cow bedding area, the little calves area, the bigger calf area, the dry cows area ( the cows that are waiting to give birth) all cleaned up and sanitized with hydrated lime and today the area for the heifers was cleaned and now we are letting it dry so we can apply the lime to sanitize. There is still a lot of other spring clean up that is needed to be done around the farm but it will be done when the time comes. Next we have to clean the drift wood and debris from the fields but the water is still in the fields in the lower ends.

We need to get rid of years of accumulation of junk and are going to get a big dumpster.

Sunday afternoon we worked on the back flower bed where all the drift wood and debris was dumped and will finish it tomorrow.

We are taking it one day at a time and feel no different than before the flood. Life is too short to worry about these little inconveniences that life throw at us to see if we are getting the message or not of what is important in our lives.

In my ceramic shop I have about 3500 molds and two third have been under water, my two kilns, my pouring table, pouring machine, reclaimer and paints, glazes, drawers after drawers full of electrical supplies, etc., etc. I have not yet had time to sort things out from my ceramic supplies that had water damage.

Molds will have to be dried and examine when the time permits and the clean up begins. It will be a bit awkward as molds takes a lot of space. The discards will have to be smashed so they will not take so much room in the dumpster as each molds are hollow in the center. A wet mold weigh an awful lot more than a dry mold. Soon it will be all behind us and we will feel a bit lighter for getting rid of an awful lot of stuff that we REALLY DON'T NEED ANYWAY.

Mamoo

As for myself, I started back at work today. I spent the morning scraping clay goo off the floor of the clay mixing room (Students can either buy premixed clay, or mix up their own using various clay powders.) Things were left to dry with industrial dehumidifers and large fans while I went to help start putting the store back together. Today a lot of the shelves get put back up and the things put back on them. I think that that is where I will be for most of the day. At least it will be clean.

Today is also the day that our studio starts setting up for the gallery show that was suppose to open last Thursday. It is going to feature work from all classes in the Fiber Arts studio. The opening is Thursday from 4:30 till 6:30 at The Gallery which is located in the college. Stop by if you like!

A view from the farm

Mom sent me a few pictures so I thought that I would share them with you.
This is during the flood. The little shed is where she stores gardening supplies and other thing that she doesn't want in the house. She said that she hasn't even looked inside yet.
Here is some of her flowerbeds. This is in the high part of the yard.


And this is the garden and part of the driveway. the road along the river runs between the hedge on the left and the bush on the right.
This is a view of the farm from the second story of their house.

This is her basement. Mom has/had a ceramic shop in the basement. The bottom dropped out of the ceramic business a few years ago, and mom got sick so she really hasn't been doing a lot down there in the past few years. But the kiln was still good (you can see the lid of the kiln just behind the door. They moved all of the molds and whatnot up to above 2 feet expecting that much water in the basement. But as you can see, it wasn't enough.

And some aftermath shots.
This is some of my brothers stuff that he stored at the barn.

Here is water still in the milking parlour. Mom said that after the last milking, the sewers were full of water and so they just scraped what they could of what the cows deposited that milking, into a pile where it dried.
A note on milking parlours for those of you who have never seen one. The image of a maid sitting on a milking stool is one of those things that is way in the past. There are probably some people that milk their one or two cows by hand, but not in my family. Some of dad's "girls" can produce up to 40 litres of milk a day. They get milked twice a day and there are some 70 cows that need to be milked. The modern milking machines work with suction. The silver tubes that you see hanging down in groups of four are attached to the cow's teats. While they are hanging down, there is no suction. When the get turned up and attached to a teat, they start sucking. In our set up there are 8 cows that are getting milked at any one time and in order to save the farmer from a lot of bending and stooping, the place where the farmer stands is lower than where the cow stands. And that place is full of flood waters.

Water level on the milk storage tank.


Here is a view of mom's garden. The soil used to be about 6 inches above the level of the grass. Now it is about 6 inches below. Those are leeks that mom left in the garden last fall. Their roots are now showing.

A couple of years ago, mom and dad had a new well drilled. The currents eroded the soil away from the well cap. Thankfully the water did not reach the top of the well. If it had of, the well would have been contaminated.

One of mom's perennial beds. Her day lilies had a lot of the soil from around their roots eroded away. You can see part of where the soil from the garden went to in the upper left. There is a sand bar across mom's lawn.

Gravel from the end of the garden where the well was dug.

One of her compost bins that wasn't fastened to the ground.

It ended up in the hedge along with a lot of other debris.
Wooden swings and yet more debris sitting on one of mom's large flower beds. You can also see part of the sand bar.


What a mess.

Just in case you are interested

Here is an article in a local paper about my dad having to move the cows.

Hoya

I have had my hoya for about 12 years. It had never bloomed. No big surprise seeing as it was in a dark corner. Our house has very little direct sunlight that comes in through the windows. I move it to one of the few windows that does get a bit of light in the kitchen.

Last night I walked by the plant and smelled a very sweet smell. Lo and behold! It had bloomed! I had noticed and rejoiced in the buds a couple of weeks ago but hadn't realized that they were so close to blooming.


There are several more bud clusters around the plant so I shall be enjoying their loveliness for a while yet.
And the flood waters around here have receded quite a bit. I still haven't heard what is happening at the school. And I haven't been able to get in touch with my parents yet today to see what is going on out there.

Bob's house

This is our friend Bob's house. He said that the water stopped 2 inches shy of coming in on the ground floor. He is in for quite a clean up.

The officials are saying that the water has crested in Fredericton but for those down stream, the water is still rising. It is like a wave that is slow in coming.
These people in Maugerville are still in an area where the water is rising. Not good.
And seeing as Bill mentioned the script that he wrote me, I will tell you about it. For those of you (like me) who don't know a whole lot about computers, a script is a mini program that can help you do repetitive tasks.
My camera takes rather large photos and I like to shrink them down before I post them. I turn them if they need it, then rename them (photo 1783 means nothing to me, but Bob's house means quite a bit) and then save them to the desktop where I can easily find them. It takes me about a minute to do each one. It is a lot of dragging and dropping, pulling down menus, clicking, etc.. So I asked him if he could write me a script to do it. I told him what I wanted it to be able to do and poof! He made it. He was very excited with my asking for it because he has been scripting. I really couldn't think of any thing that I do on the computer that was repetitive enough to warrant a script. I had found that I have been avoiding doing blog posts because I would have had to deal with the pictures first and some days I just didn't feel like it. Now it will be easy.

Thanks Bill.

Aerial views of the St John River

can be found here. My parents farm is picture 20.

Note: Bill is right. The image # is 2, which is between #19 and #21. Silly me thinking that 20 fell between 19 and 21.

Here it is

And now for something completely different

Get the kleenex, face cloth, or what ever it is you need to wipe your chin.

I saw an ad on the back of an old Spin Off for Golding Wheels and spinning accessories. If you are a spinner, or an appreciator of beautiful things, go and look. The craftsmanship is amazing.

Flood up date: The powers that be say that they believed that the water may have crested, but it was too early to tell so to remain vigilant. We will walk down later and take a few pictures and I will see if I can get some information about the water level in the school.

How much water?

Just above Fredericton is a dam. It is called the Mactaquac dam.

Bill found out this little tidbit of info about the amount of water that is going over the dam today.


Niagra Falls average flow rate: 202,000 cubic feet per second (source Wikipaedia)

Mactaquac Dam inflow on Saint John River today: 376,000 cubic feet per second (source government Riverwatch site [probably via NB Power])

We have a friend that lives up that way who sent Bill an image of the amount of water that is going over the dam and the level on the down side was only slightly lower than the water on the up side.

Flood update

My Dad and brother Von had to evacuate the cows yesterday. There was a farmer up in Keswick Ridge that had gotten sick a few years ago and had to sell off all his cows so he was able to house them. He had room for 70 milkers and that was how many the farm has. The other cows and calves were all able to be boarded at other farms who were not in danger of flooding. Von called last night at about 10 to say that he had just finished milking. The poor dears are usually milked by 4:30. And after breastfeeding and having been engorged a time or two, all I have to say is ouch. I hope that none of them get mastitis. Dad is staying at the house. There is about two feet of water in the basement as of this morning and they lost power sometime during the night. I am hoping that Von was able to take some pictures. If he did, I will post some.

Last night after supper, Bill took the kids down to see the water. The road leading to the bridge was blocked off and they took a trip down the median strip.

The building to the right is the city hall, to the left is the provincial court house.

This is Officers Square which is beside the library. There is still a bit of dry land to be seen.

There used to be train tracks that ran through town. Most places where the road met the track the cars had to stop but there is one place where 4 streets meet and at that spot is an underpass. You can see the water spilling in in the lower left side of the picture. While Bill and the kids were down there, they saw two cars that tried to get through that stalled. Some people think that if you go through water quickly you will make it to the other side. All that happens is that the splashing from your tiers soaks your engine. You need to go through slowly and that only works if the water is lower than your engine.

The kids came home about the same time that mom and I got back from doing groceries. They were cold, had wet feet, and were wound up tighter than a spring.

So this morning Bill, Liam, and I went to see the progression of the water. Here is where Brunswick Street meets Carleton Street. This is the same place that I took the picture yesterday but viewed from the other side. The post to the left is were I was standing yesterday.

Here is Officer's Square again. It is completely filled up.

Here we are back at the over pass. See yesterday's pictures for a comparison.

This is the bike rack seen in other pictures. The brown stuff is debris that is caught up on the first rung. You can just see the other rungs peeking out of the water to the right of the debris.

The library and parking lot again as well as the road that had a bit of water on it yesterday.

Thew view looking up river. The on ramps to the bridge are now closed off and traffic on Westmorland Street (the only access to the bridge) is backed up for blocks. It was backed up last night from well before 4 until well after 10. It is the same today.

The other side of the foot bridge. Liam though that the amount of water was amazing. It was cold out there too. The temperature is just above freezing and there was quite a stiff breeze.

When we left the walking bridge I stopped by the Armoury where the Cadets train and the fellow there said that they had 4 feet of water in the basement. The school is about 20 feet from their building and we stopped there next. There was a fellow posted outside keeping an eye on a generator who said that as of last look there was only an inch of water in the basement. I am hoping beyond hope that it doesn't reach the 6 feet that was predicted. Some of the things that needed to be left behind are a couple of large slop buckets of clay. When you are throwing, there are usually bits of clay that come off on your hands and a bit left on the wheel after you remove you pot. There is also some clay that comes off when the bottoms of the pots are trimmed to make the nice feet that you usually see. This all ends up in large garbage cans and is eventually recycled. The elevator stopped before they were brought up. If the water gets up to the top of those, the mess will be triple what it would be.

The powers that be still don't know if it has reached it's peak yet. They think not.

There are a lot of roads that are closed. You can see a list here if you are so inclined. And if you would like to see a contour map of where the water will rise to at 8.5 meters you can see that here. They expect the water to rise to at least 8.6 meters.

And through this all, Mira made challah bread. She is turning into quite the baker!
Check back later for more up dates.