Kids

The kids were a little upset at the fact that the house was in shambles when we got home. All their toys and things had been moved to boxes and stored in the garage. To lift their spirits, we let them ride their trikes in the house on the concrete floors before we started all the repairs, and focused most of our attention on getting their rooms back to normal before anything else. On a special note, the one thing I did before letting them into the home was to remove all of the carpeting tack strips from the floors. This was the only real safety hazard I found that remained after the recovery company had left. I'm sure the carpet installers would have been very happy had I left them in, but since the Insurance company wasn't willing to relocate us, there was no way I was going to leave those in and have the kids walking around the house.

Pets

The pets were really not affected at all by the flood. The only reason I mention them here, is the recovery company had no less than 24 blowers going in the house for 6 days after the flood. With all those blowers going, it sounded like I was standing at the back of a 747 during takeoff. We decided to board the pets for a week while the blowers were in the house.

Electronics

We had our family PC located just a couple feet from the burst on the floor. I thought for sure that it was a goner (along with all the information on it). A wise friend told me not to touch it but let it dry out for several days to make good and sure everything was dry before attempting anything. After a couple days of drying out, I popped open the case and found a water line inside the machine, but it had not gotten up to the mother board. With my fingers crossed, I plugged in the machine and to my surprise it was no worse for the wear (or water). This friend of mine said this is true for a lot of electronics. Not always, but in a lot of cases, if an electronic item gets wet, the real damage is done powering up the item while there is still water in the components.