Chapter 9
Friday, December 5, 2008.
I keep forgetting to date these as I write. Chapter 7 was today also!
1967 was an interesting year. First, in June, we had an earthquake! At around 8am, I was sitting on the couch in the livingroom and everything began to shake. There were three sharp jolts. The pendulum lamp hanging in the entry over the front door was swinging wildly, almost hitting the wall on one side. When it paused, I ran downstairs to the children, who were still sleeping. They had felt nothing. We all ran outside, but there was no more to it. For the rest of the summer, we had after-shocks, but nothing like the first three shocks, that was it. I don’t remember now what it registered on the Richter Scale, but I learned that the aftershocks were about 3.5. In the jolts we’ve had since, I’ve been pretty close at guessing what they rated.
Now on to the flood of August, 1967. Fairbanks it’s was celebrating its Centennial and the dance clubs were dancing at the Pioneer Hall at Alaskaland. Alaskaland was new that year. On Saturday night as we walked from the parking lot to the hall, the gravel was squishy and wet. The ground had soaked up just about as much of the rain as it could. Rain had been falling for a solid week or more by then.
The following Monday, I had laundry going in the basement and here comes water splashing up through the floor drain. I stopped everything but didn’t get the clothes out of the washer or the dryer before calling Bernie to come home. He made it, thank goodness. We watched the water come up the street.
The basement filled to mid window level, about 5 feet, just below the circuit box in the basement. Neighbors came to help get the furniture upstairs. The piano went to the garage. Bernie took the motor out of the furnace and dried it out in the oven upstairs. The oil smell lingered for quite a while!
The next time I saw the piano, it was floating on its back in the garage, the keys scattered everywhere! That was the piano I had bought with my first savings! Oh well.......
The water stayed at the 5’ level for a week. We had water from the faucets, but we couldn’t flush the toilet upstairs, because it would just come up in the basement. So we used a honey bucket, and emptied into a large garbage can on the back porch. The Burris family down the street took in another family, and the men went from house to house in a canoe checking on people. We had taken up a carpet in the basement and had it in the driveway beside our Greenbrier and a small Renault. Bud Burris and the other man reported to us that they saw that carpet caught inside a fence some few houses down the street! They retrieved it for us later. They also brought us fish and meat from freezers people were emptying as they left their homes. We ate very well that week! Many people left their homes and stayed up at the University or at the High School. We were fortunate that we didn’t have to do that.
The Renault was completely submerged in the water, and the Greenbrier had water up to the dashboard. Bernie drove the Greenbrier till the silt in the transmission finally wore it out. The Renault was totaled by the insurance company and towed away. Months later we got a notice from the Anchorage police that the Renault had a traffic violation in Anchorage. Someone must have got it there somehow. We heard no more about it after sending a letter of explanation about the flood and subsequent insurance situation.
While the water was in the basement, Bernie made a raft with a shower curtain and an air mattress and went ‘boating’ to retrieve some of the laundry from the washer and dryer, and to turn off the electrical circuits for the basement. He tied outdoor hoses together and, using a piece of fence as a raft in the back yard, retrieved sections of fence that had floated up and drifted away. He made the most of a bad situation!
The water finally went down so that I could mop out the basement, but that wasn’t the end of it! I was enjoying a warm soothing bath when a knock on the door was followed by, “Mommy, there’s water in the basement again!” The sewer line was being flushed and it backed up about four inches of silty water again! Mopping that down was easier the second time, thank goodness!
We were also fortunate to have our mortgage payments put on hold temporarily while we assessed the damages and figured out what to do. We didn’t have to take out any loans. We did lose a lot of irreplaceable books, some furniture (I didn’t like it anyway!), and all in all we came out good compared to the losses other people had. Thank you, Lord!
Meanwhile, the flowers planted in front of the basement windows waved under the water and when it went down, were better than ever. Especially the Nasturtiums. They were beautiful. Apparently, the silt in the water was good fertilizer!