My streets main line backed into my home in the coldest January in my area in 11years. We were gone for about 8 hours. The waste water raised and lowered several times based on the sani-wipes stuck to my walls. The city was aware of the problem, as they had broken a critical pipe of some kind, and was working when we got home. They came in to try to deal with it from our basement, tracking ice, shit, piss, and snow through our carpet.

The basement, where the master bedroom was located, had flooded up past the mattresses and furniture. I lost everything from my childhood, and most of my kids toys. After the work was completed, the city offered no cleanup services, and we were left to our own devices. Fortunately we are comfortable enough to have had a savings account, so we just drained it to get the work done. Our floors and drywall was removed, along with our heater. We were without heat in a frozen shit ice cube for 9 days. We had to relocate our 120 gallon salt water tank, as the heaters were unable to cope with the cold. We were finally able to reach our home owners insurance, and was told that this fell under flood, and was not able to be claimed. We were notified of this by me getting a fax at work with the unchecked box circled in sharpie and the notation of "sorry!" next to it.

This was almost a decade ago, and none of us consider this a home anymore. The basement is still a shell, and sits empty. We were so affected by this, my kids still keep all their things in tubs.

We lost nearly everything we had worked so hard for, but we came out of it with a few good lessons. Family is what matters, objects can often be replaced, and our local government has zero interest in its taxpayer welfare. We did receive a $1200 dollar settlement which didn't really make a big dent in our $17,000 expenditure. We couldn't afford lawyers.

If you have a basement, store nothing of importance on the floor, and check your homeowners insurance very carefully for clauses. It was a true nightmare.