Clean Up Begins For Families Hit By Floods
NORTFIELD, Ill. (CBS) -- The flood waters are receding. Now the clean-up begins for thousands of Chicago area residents whose homes and businesses were inundated by flooding.
Clean Up Begins For Families Hit By Floods
One such family is Jim and Amy Thompson's, on Bristol Street in north suburban Northfield.
By midday Saturday their basement carpet had been stripped out and placed at the curb. Walls and floors were being bleached and cleaned to prevent the spread of mold, a shorted-out refrigerator and work computer were waiting to be moved, and the rest of the house was in chaos because of items moved from the basement in haste as the water poured in.
"This is the first time the water actually came in like a waterfall in our basement," Amy Thompson said. "It just kept coming in and coming in."
This time her back yard has been transformed into a pond, complete with ducks, which thrills daughter Hannah, 10, but not the adults.
Thompson and her husband, Jim, are debating whether to replace the carpet or put down tile. Thompson works on his furniture installation business from the basement. He said he has waited for years for the village of Northfield to make good on promises of storm sewer reconstruction as part of the Willow Road expansion project, but that work is barely underway and he says he's been told that relief is a couple of years off at best.
Thompson built his home new in 2000, and said the chronic flooding in the area is getting frustrating.
Asked if he has ever regretted building where he did, he said, "Every day. Every day."
