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The Flood of 2001

a life changing event!

In June of 2001 Tropical Storm Allison paid a little visist to our area of the world. Having grown up on the gulf coast I was use to storms. Or at least I thought I was. Allison showed me that I had no idea what a storm would do.

I went to bed at 1:30 a.m. after watching the storm to make sure it did not intensifie and become a hurricane. When I went to bed it was lightly raining but the street was clear.

At 3:30 a.m. my son woke me to tell me he had a little water in his room. I figured that the roof had sprung a leak. So I got up to go see. What I found was that his idea of a little water was about 2' deep or just or my knees. When I threw my legs off and onto the floor I found not just 2' of water but that is was extremely cold.

When I went to see if we could get out to safety I found that what was once a street was now a large river that extended as far as the eye could see. As I went out I had to force the door close as the water which was higher outside tried to rush in. I found that our mail box (the top of the pole stood 5" tall) was underwater and the current was fast. In short no way out.

We sent the night in the attic hopeing that the water would not rise any further. Lucky for us it never got much higher. We did however loosed everything.

I called my brew buddy in the morning to tell him that we could not brew do to a small water problem we had at the brewery. He said that I had no dedication and that he would be right over to help get thing cleaned up so we could brew. He called back shortly afterwards to say he would be a while. The roads where all flooded.

We have now rebuilt and watch the rain everytime it looks bad. On the good side the batch of beer that was in the secondary was saved and no beer was lost.