Enough whining and on to what I really wanted to post about...
This last Monday, we had a nasty wind and rain storm that hit us here in the Northwest. Most of the wind hit the coast with gusts measured at over 100 mph!! (That's hurricane strength winds!)
The Saturday before, it snowed about 4 inches in the area. (I again forgot to get some good pictures, I'll post the few that I got of one of the dogs.) The snow fall turned to rain by Sunday and didn't stop until Tuesday. Needless to say, the snow all melted away and the constant rain coming down made for a bunch of water with nowhere to go.
Small streams and creeks became roaring rivers, parking lots became large lakes and houses became islands in several feet of water.
This picture is from The Seattle Times, it shows just how badly everything flooded in Western Washington.
Doesn't it just remind you of pictures from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?
Luckily where we live didn't flood, thank goodness for living on a hill! Most of the flooding was in Lewis county, which is South of Tacoma.
They even had to close down a 20 mile section of Interstate 5 in Lewis County because there was about 10 feet of water covering it!
This picture is also from The Seattle Times and shows how badly flooded the freeway was. I think it looks more like a river than anything!
Tim has some friends that live down where it flooded and luckily they were all safe! They were nice enough to keep everyone updated and even sent pictures that they took.
On the news station that Tim and I watch, we saw on Tuesday that they were going to be in the parking lot of Ikea in Renton to take donations for all the flood victims. I really felt strongly about helping out.
They said they would be there from 6 AM to 11 PM on Wednesday. So we sent out emails to friends and families in the area asking for donations (food, blankets, socks, gift cards, pretty much anything) and we would take it all down there at 8 PM.
By the time we got home from work at 6 PM on Wednesday, the news was saying that they weren't accepting any more donations of "stuff" but only cash, checks and gift cards. It was probably a good thing that we didn't gather a ton of stuff throughout the day (even though it was kind of disappointing that we only heard back from a small handful of people to help.)
We decided that we should still take something down there. So we stopped at a grocery store and picked up a couple of giftcards to take down there. (Yay for grocery stores carrying an array of giftcards these days!) We got one for Home Depot, one for QFC and a MasterCard giftcard. Tim also had a giftcard to a gas station that isn't in our area, so we decided to donate that one as well.
The goal for the news station was to fill one semi truck full of stuff....well they got 7 trucks worth out of it! They also got $50,000 in cash and $5,000 in giftcards! I can honestly say that I am VERY impressed with the turnout!
Everyone affected by the flooding are in my thoughts and I can't even imagine a thing like this happening, especially during this time of year! They definately won't be having a normal Christmas!
Go to this website if you want to find out more about the floods and the donations that were made: http://www.komotv.com/
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