Life After the Flood

It has now been 40 days since my wife Debbie and I were impacted by the High River flood on June 20, 2013.  The experience of walking into your home after such an ordeal, to say the least, was shocking, upsetting and startling.  Where do you begin to start as you are surveying the damage to your basement?  Who do you call to get your back door fixed after it was kicked in?   Most of all, you think, how did it get to this?  So you just begin the cleanup process and hope you can save as much as you can and try to get rid of the mold since our home sat for 10 days before we were allowed back in.  As our flood  was  the result of sewage backup my insurance company said we would be covered,  but we are still waiting, with fingers crossed.

Now that we have our basement cleaned up and back to the unfinished stage we are  turning our attention to trying to get some normalcy back in to our lives.  Our dogs are still trying to figure out what happened but they are coming around as well.  We both wish to thank the many volunteers that helped us clean out our basement.  Now comes the decision, do you rebuild not knowing what next year brings?  I wish to thank my employer, Watson Gloves, for everything they have done for us.  From Kasey Whitman,  Vice President of Western Canada, for coming out with his Master Builder brother,  Brady, and getting my water heater installed (cold showers just like camping for the first couple of nights) and for setting me up with a Heating contractor to get a furnace installed (put in last Thursday).   Martin Moore, President of Watson Gloves, and Barrie Moore, Owner/Chairman, for their many thoughtful words of encouragement and  support. The Watson Gloves saying is, “it may not take a village to build a glove but it sure does help to have a team of dedicated professionals on board”.  I don’t think I could have worded it any better. It is times like this that you really appreciate the people  you deal with on a daily basis, from everyone in our head office in Burnaby to our Mississauga branch  …  everyone here in our Calgary office, you all really stepped up for us at this time.   I’d like to thank Kirk McManes, Branch Manager, for all his hard work organizing the donations and helping me get our new fridge home (so we didn’t have to live out of a cooler anymore).  I would never wish this experience on anyone, ever, but Debbie and I are fortunate that we can begin to try and get back to our life the way it was before the flood.  There are countless people who still or may never be able to return to their homes and it’s unfortunate that our small town will become even smaller.

Again, our heartfelt thanks to everyone who helped us in our time of need.

Patrick McCormack

Operations Manager

Calgary, Alberta