Storm - May 30, 2008

We had a nasty storm hit Indy on the evening of May 30, 2008.  Brian and the boys were supposed to camp out at the Indian's game that night with scouts, but they cancelled it after the game when they noticed a bad storm approaching Indy.  We got home just in time to hear the tornado sirens go off.  About 20 minutes later our power went out.  We moved to the basement but about 30 minutes later the basement started flooding.  We were without power for 14 hours and ended up with about 6 inches of water in our basement.  It was a constant battle to get stuff off the floor and battle tipping plastic tubs.  They seemed like a great idea at the time but if they have no weight, they float when the water gets deep enough.  A stack of tubs tip over when they float.  Who knew!?!  There were a couple tornados that came within a mile of our house and we had nasty straight-line winds.  Here are some photos of our flooding as well as damage around our neighborhood.

When the water started to rise we got as many toys off the floor as possible and on to the train table	We used paint cans to elevate the couch and chair and as you can see they were barely high enough
As tubs started to tip we moved some items to the stairs but needed to keep a path open	This is the what the storage room looked like after we got the water pumped out
This shows the area near the bottom of the stairs with an approximate water line.  Splashing water caused the line to be higher than the actual water line.	We had Jean's mom's dolls in our basement and many of them got wet.  Here we try to dry everything in our back yard
One of the boxes we had to go through had an old Oriole's helmet popular with kids in the 80s	This is one of the trees near our neighborhood that was damaged
One neighbor lost their trampoline; it was folded like a taco	This tree split in several areas
You can see the scarring on this tree where it was struck by lightening	This tree was snapped in half by straight-line winds and fell across the walking path
This shows how the tree split	You can see the rotted roots on this tree that was uprooted
All but one of the basements on our street flooded but they lost a tree in their front yard that landed on the camper and van in the background