VCBurner said:
I knew something great would come of this. You seem like too good of a guy for anything else. Congrats! Good luck on the now HOME PURCHASE!
Sorry to hear about the loss in your family, at least they are all healthy I hope, lives cannot be brought back, homes can be rebuilt. Good luck to all!
Yes! A lifelong dream about to come true, and at the most unlikely of times
Out of the ashes of despair arises the phoenix. Good woodburning imagery, eh?
VC, my sister will most likely rebuild. Her husband grew up in that house, and they are river people through and through. Their greatest joy is to sit out on their deck and watch the boats come up and down through the locks. My brother-in-law is the chief of Lock 2 in Waterford, NY. - the end of the Erie Canal. You can actually see him at work from her house if he is standing on the catwalk that goes over the lock. Pretty cool.
They say that during the 1800s there were two types of businesses in Waterford - saloons and whorehouses. We used to play along the old tow path on what became the holding water for the lock system. We would call out, "Tidal wave!" whenever they would send water down, and it would wash out our carefully built little sand peninsulas and stick houses that were sitting there awaiting destruction.
Well, the water sure came down there last week. Waterford is a tiny community that sits right at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson Rivers. Every boat that travels from the west to go down the Hudson has to pass directly past my sister's house. There's some fancy sailboats out there, let me tell you. With all that water comes lots of flooding, and the people are somewhat hardened to it. Not this time. The water rose almost to the middle of town, and that is a pretty fair grade up to there. Some of the homes can never be rebuilt, they simply can't be insured again at a price anyone could afford.
Flood water came roaring down the Hudson, and just east of me picked up 23,000 CFS from the raging Battenkill River... a flow that is ordinarily 100X less than that this time of year. Then to the west, 130,000 CFS came blasting down the Schoharie Creek, wiping out all of Blenheim, Middleburg, Schoharie, and Esperance before dumping into the swollen Mohawk. There is caused widespread destruction in the Tribes Hill and Rotterdam Junction area, swept past my daughter's house and wiped her prized garden plot off the map, and caused local flooding all along the way to where it poured into the Hudson... right in my sister's backyard. It was the "Perfect Flood".
I'm happy to say that the reports of my sister's lack of flood insurance were greatly exaggerated. She did have insurance after all, but it has been costing them a fortune. They have decided not to rebuild the bottom floor, but simply to erect concrete walls under the top floor and make it a garage. This represents a loss of an $800/month rental, and the loss of the companionship of the good friends who rented from them. Her husband's brother Dave also grew up in that house, and even though he lives in NC right now, part of his heart is still in little old Waterford. Here's what Dave had to say on Facebook about what folks would end up doing after the flood:
"River people are tough, they get flooded they rebuild. They don't sit around feeling sorry for themselves, they just do it. Good luck to everyone whose lives have been uprooted by this flood. In a few weeks it will be like nothing happened and you'll be enjoying the fact you live near the river."
And they
are tough. God bless them all.
Best of luck househunting, hope you can find just what you're looking for!
