Diary of a Flood Survivor

By Samantha Elley

When we evacuated our house on Monday, February 28, 2022, we closed everything up and locked the house.

This also meant we left the garage door down.

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Our neighbours were a little smarter, they left theirs up.

This means the water flowed through but the pressure if it didn’t buckle the door.

Our poor garage door now has a slight bow to it.

What this means is, instead of just replacing the motor for the garage door to lift up and down, we actually have to replace the whole garage door.

An expensive lesson learnt.

As I write, we are waiting for the garage door people to turn up and replace it.

Since the house was built it has been a black door, but as with everything else we have replaced and renewed, we are trying something different.

We are going grey. I know, we’re such daredevils!

For those of us living in a flood prone area, perhaps we should collectively gather all the wisdom we have learnt from last year and write a tip book.

Then we can keep our own copies and hand them out to anyone new who moves to the area.

Make it part of a welcome pack.

While we obviously can’t stop future floods, maybe we can mitigate the stress and expense by doing little things to make it easier.

My first tip would be to keep the garage door open.