Swimming in the Basement

Our apartment building has storage units in the basement near the underground parking. Because JP and I have a small apartment and a lot of stuff, our two units are pretty full. Yesterday morning I noticed a sign on the elevator notifying residents that a water pipe had burst over the weekend, flooding the storage area and underground parking. Thankfully, we can't afford underground parking, so our cars were fine (usually I covet those spaces while I'm brushing snow off my car in the morning). Our stuff was not so fine.

Last weekend I packed up all the clothes that aren't going to fit for another 9 or so months and put them in our biggest suitcase. JP took them down to the storage unit because it was taking up 80% of the walking space in our bedroom. Last night, after trudging down to the basement to survey the damage, we found a large pool of water surrounding our two units. Water was just running out of all the suitcases- all my clothes were soaked. We had to throw away a desktop computer, a stereo, and two boxes of books and lug 5 sopping wet suitcases up to our apartment. We took everything out and blow dried the insides. [Random aside: our cat loves sleeping in suitcases and kept trying to jump in the ones all over the floor- she'd immediately jump out, totally horrified by the wetness, and then try another. It took about 20 min. before she gave up- and I think she may be cured from trying to jump in suitcases ever again! No more white fur on my clothes when I travel!] I washed/dryed all the clothes I had so carefully packed away and there were hangers dangling from every possible place in our apartment. After an hour and a half, the suitcases were dry and the clothes were drying. It could have been much worse- a lot of our stuff was in giant plastic storage bins and stayed safe. Since it took so long to get that situation under control, I never did my admin reading. I was trying to decide what I'd say if the professor called on me today- "Sorry, water damage."?