I thought I was prepared for what I would find. I knew the town faced damage, and I knew to expect our complex was in the thick of it. The smell inside the condos was a little harder to stomach, even having steeled myself for it going in. In the younger daughter's condo, where we knew immediately that there was damage, the carpets are already out, but it still smells pretty funky. In the older daughter's unit, there was a little water seepage, and it blended with the customization her dog had already done on the carpeting, and then it was left locked up for several days while everyone was evacuated, while the assumption was that the flood left that condo alone. The smell knocked me off my feet. Our carpet and baseboard damage paled in comparison to the devastation that started two buildings over. I walked some with the kids and the dog, and saw fast moving water in the drainage ditches that are usually little trickles. And I walked down by the swamped buildings in our complex, where the restoration company was already hard at work, saving what they could, disposing what they couldn't. When you watch things like this on television, your reactions are gauged by how close something is to home. It's really tough when you see a total loss like this, that starts at most seventy feet from where your daughter sleeps.
I met with a lot of key players today. Our homeowners insurance agent told me exactly what I expected to hear, that absolutely none of this was covered by that policy. I was prepared for that, so I'm neither upset nor surprised. The news was better when I met with the HOA board president and the manager of the restoration company. Their flood policy for the complex is very good, and it's looking good that we will be covered for flooring, baseboards, drywall, insulation, and trash hauling. No word yet whether the cabinets in the kitchen are salvageable. Not my decision to make, but I'm hoping they have to come out, because of the unimaginably strange countertops this unit came with would have to go too. (Someone thought they were making "faux granite," but it was just a sloppy mess of red, white, and black paint, with gold glitter thrown in clumps, and the whole thing covered in badly applied urethane, that didn't cover the chunks of glitter all the way.) I need to have another conversation with the restoration people tomorrow after I have rested. I think they might have said to me that the kids have to be completely moved out for months while the repairs happen. I really hope not. I just can't trust anything I heard today while I am jet-lagged.
I think living in a flight path of the airport has changed the way I look at the skies. A lot of large aircraft fly over my house, and I learned not to notice it so much. While we were on the first walk, my daughter pointed up at the helicopters flying frequently overhead. I think in my mind, they were just news helicopters shooting video of the damage. But once I looked, I realized that these are the Chinooks (not the local downslope winds of the same name), engaged in the biggest airlift since Katrina. So many people are still standed up in the mountain communities, to this very minute, and there are very few avenues out of the hills. Once my perception changed, I got a little rattled every time they flew over. It really drove home just how desperate this situation is, and it is far from over.
I took a few photos, plus I borrowed some from my friends. The godmother gave me some really good ones, of an asphalt parking lot that disintegrated from underneath a car left there, of a flooded street in Longmont, and one she took near our complex that was particularly moving. It was of a prom picture in the foreground, wet on the ground, with a destroyed home behind it. One of mine was of a stone bridge with a couple large slabs broken off of it. About fifteen feet down was one of those slabs. And a few steps in any direction of my children's homes, there is caution tape and mud.
This is going to take getting used to.
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