Martinsville, Indiana, and the Flood of 2008

Martinsville, Indiana, Dealt with the Worst Flood Since 1875

On Wednesday, June 4, 2008, I woke up to a flooded backyard and water standing in the street in front of my house. While my children, Ashley and Jonathan, were with their dad for the first two weeks of June, I was supposed to go over to Mom and Dad's house and set up for a garage sale on Friday, but I called Mom and told her I couldn't get out. My children and I have lived in this house for three years, and I had never seen our backyard flood like this before. The water was probably two feet deep at the fence. I had also never seen it flood our street like this. The water had flooded the street in front of our neighbor's house once, maybe twice, before but never like this. I didn't know what to think about any of this. Of course, little did I know what would come next.

Mom and I had done our garage sale on Friday, and on Saturday, June 7, we had planned to hopefully get rid of the rest of the stuff. I woke up at 7 a.m. to our street being even more flooded than three days before. Again, I had never seen anything like this before. Little did I know my day's adventure was just beginning.

Our backyard filled up even more than on Wednesday. The pool's pump was no longer visible while the filter was almost unseen as well. The water picked up the pool's hose from under the deck and carried it back to the fence where the water was now probably three feet deep. The water inched closer to the house. I had maybe three to four feet left running the length of the house. That left Zoe, our dog, just enough room to do her thing.

Throughout the morning between the raindrops, Zoe and I kept checking the water levels around the house. Zoe wasn't too sure what to think about the water covering the backyard where she can normally run around.

At 11 a.m. Zoe and I walked around outside while it wasn't raining. The water had begun to recede as we could see on the pool and its filter, but the crawlspace was full of water. Ashley had brought home a tulip tree from school last year, and its leaves were sticking out of the water. The tree stands probably a foot and a half tall.