Well we never go far from home now in the months of August, September, or Early October. We saved many items in our home bc we have a large unfinished space on our second floor. Took us time but we brought up area rugs, chairs, small end tables, lamps and whatever we could carry, I would suggest you bring any valuables that you would not want to see damaged up incase of flood. We had plenty of time to bring stuff upstairs but in a desert you may have faster water.

Never beleve you cant get hit with flood waters even in a desert. Prepare as if you will. We had double the water from our worst hurricane. The river gauges were under water so we had no way of knowing how much or how high it was gonna get. As we left our home the morning after the flood we were sloshing through the water on the first floor taking pictures down off the walls!

Have a go bag ready for all members of your family including any pets ahead of the storm. Keep it where you can grab and get out of the way if there is flood waters. We could have left before the flood as we had plenty of warning but we didn't want to go with five animals. Had nowhere to go actually After the storm even though the water didn't rise for 3 days the trees were down all over the neighborhood and county. Think if you should leave before the storm arrives and if not how you would exit your home if you are surrounded by water and it is rising. You don't want to be trapped in your home. If needbe keep an axe in an attic to use to climb up on a roof.

Have insurance info, important papers and numbers handy and in water safe area.

When tragedy strikes there will be NO power, no clean water, and even in our case we couldn't even use the toilets after the flooding started too much water infiltrated the sewers. The first thing I did that morning when I saw the water crest over our main road into our pond out back was take a shower. And had my husband walk our 6 lb toy poodle who was in agony the rest of the afternoon and night wanting to go outside while we were totally surrounded by water. He wouldnt use the piddle pad I put down for him in an upstairs shower until the next morning. Poor guy!

Order something to charge your phone during power outtage. Our neighbor's phone went dead during the night and he had to yell out of his window to get people to rescue him and his dog.

You will need LOTS of WATER at home. I am a prepper, but realize there is not much I can do if we flood here. I had plenty of bottled water even had water stacked in our attic area We used the stacked water to wash dishes from our refridge and freezer when we got back after the flood. I used up 6 large containers just to wash those dishes. My extra dried food stores were upstairs but no way to use them as we were flooded out of the home.

We never put in a generator here but were planning to buy and install one. It would have been underwater. So glad we never bought it. My neighbors all lost theirs in the flood. We have a small generator not a whole house one in case power goes out from an ice storm. Get yourself one if you can even if it requires gas/propane so you can save your freezer items if you have a separate freezer, Insurance will only cover $500 worth of food in a fridge. We claimed it.... but had a big freezer too and lost a lot of food. Only thing our insurance covered was that. We had FEMA insurance.

Do you have a second story to your home at all where you could potentially store items you wish to keep if you do flood? Do you have a crawl space/basement or are you on a slab. It will flood fast if you are on a slab. We had a 5 foot crawl space. So had roughly a foot in our first floor. It doesn't matter if you have 4 inches or 4 feet in your home. You will need to strip down to the baseboards up to 4 feet (wallboard panels come in 4 feet sheets) to mitigate your home so you don't have mold or mildew build up after the flood. And everything needs to be sanitized and we even had a mold specialist come in and test everything before we closed up the house again. After the wood completely dried up it was spray painted with white paint that had mold killer in it just in case.

As for what we would do differently. If it happens again, we would mitigate the home take our money and run. I would never rebuild this home again. It was a nightmare. Ended up in court with our original builder who built this home two years before the flood. I had some very custom features I wanted him to restore. He was cutting corners everywhere he could even though our contract stated he would rebuild it to the original build. We held back paying him in full until everything was done. Our lawyer said that was legit based on our contract. The builder even took cabinets he made and installed in our rebuilt home as collateral. Even took off the knobs and sanded the panels on the doors down on both sides and finally returned them after we sicked the county sherrif after him with a warrant. This after 3 letters from our lawyers to return the doors and drawers! Apparently the judge didn't believe he had stolen our cabinets and drawers even though our lawyer said it was a felony. We lost our court case with him, unfortunately, bc the judge believed he took them to fix them. After builder stole them we didn't want him back to finish. So according to judge we had to pay him for the remainder we owed him we reneged on the contract.. So he either paid off the judge or we ended up with a very dumb judge in a kangaroo court who didn't understand the case. Judge was a Democrat appointed by our Dem governor.

Well we never go far from home now in the months of August, September, or Early October. We saved many items in our home bc we have a large unfinished space on our second floor. Took us time but we brought up area rugs, chairs, small end tables, lamps and whatever we could carry, I would suggest you bring any valuables that you would not want to see damaged up incase of flood. We had plenty of time to bring stuff upstairs but in a desert you may have faster water.

Have a go bag ready for all members of your family including any pets ahead of the storm. Keep it where you can grab and get out of the way if there is flood waters. We could have left before the flood as we had plenty of warning but we didn't want to go with five animals. Had nowhere to go actually After the storm even though the water didn't rise for 3 days the trees were down all over the neighborhood and county. Think if you should leave before the storm arrives and if not how you would exit your home if you are surrounded by water and it is rising. You don't want to be trapped in your home. If needbe keep an axe in an attic to use to climb up on a roof.

Have insurance info, important papers and numbers handy and in water safe area.

When tragedy strikes there will be NO power, no clean water, and even in our case we couldn't even use the toilets after the flooding started too much water infiltrated the sewers. The first thing I did that morning when I saw the water crest over our main road into our pond out back was take a shower. And had my husband walk our 6 lb toy poodle who was in agony the rest of the afternoon and night wanting to go outside while we were totally surrounded by water. He wouldnt use the piddle pad I put down for him in an upstairs shower until the next morning. Poor guy!

Order something to charge your phone during power outtage. Our neighbor's phone went dead during the night and he had to yell out of his window to get people to rescue him and his dog.

You will need LOTS of WATER at home. I am a prepper, but realize there is not much I can do if we flood here. I had plenty of bottled water even had water stacked in our attic area We used the stacked water to wash dishes from our refridge and freezer when we got back after the flood. I used up 6 large containers just to wash those dishes. My extra dried food stores were upstairs but no way to use them as we were flooded out of the home.

We never put in a generator here but were planning to buy and install one. It would have been underwater. So glad we never bought it. My neighbors all lost theirs in the flood. We have a small generator not a whole house one in case power goes out from an ice storm. Get yourself one if you can even if it requires gas/propane so you can save your freezer items if you have a separate freezer, Insurance will only cover $500 worth of food in a fridge. We claimed it.... but had a big freezer too and lost a lot of food. Only thing our insurance covered was that. We had FEMA insurance.

Do you have a second story to your home at all where you could potentially store items you wish to keep if you do flood? Do you have a crawl space/basement or are you on a slab. It will flood fast if you are on a slab. We had a 5 foot crawl space. So had roughly a foot in our first floor. It doesn't matter if you have 4 inches or 4 feet in your home. You will need to strip down to the baseboards up to 4 feet (wallboard panels come in 4 feet sheets) to mitigate your home so you don't have mold or mildew build up after the flood. And everything needs to be sanitized and we even had a mold specialist come in and test everything before we closed up the house again. After the wood completely dried up it was spray painted with white paint that had mold killer in it just in case.

As for what we would do differently. If it happens again, we would mitigate the home take our money and run. I would never rebuild this home again. It was a nightmare. Ended up in court with our original builder who built this home two years before the flood. I had some very custom features I wanted him to restore. He was cutting corners everywhere he could even though our contract stated he would rebuild it to the original build. We held back paying him in full until everything was done. Our lawyer said that was legit based on our contract. The builder even took cabinets he made and installed in our rebuilt home as collateral. Even took off the knobs and sanded the panels on the doors down on both sides and finally returned them after we sicked the county sherrif after him with a warrant. This after 3 letters from our lawyers to return the doors and drawers! Apparently the judge didn't believe he had stolen our cabinets and drawers even though our lawyer said it was a felony. We lost our court case with him, unfortunately, bc the judge believed he took them to fix them. After builder stole them we didn't want him back to finish. So according to judge we had to pay him for the remainder we owed him we reneged on the contract.. So he either paid off the judge or we ended up with a very dumb judge in a kangaroo court who didn't understand the case. Judge was a Democrat appointed by our Dem governor.

Well we never go far from home now in the months of August, September, or Early October. We saved many items in our home bc we have a large unfinished space on our second floor. Took us time but we brought up area rugs, chairs, small end tables, lamps and whatever we could carry, I would suggest you bring any valuables that you would not want to see damaged up incase of flood. We had plenty of time to bring stuff upstairs but in a desert you may have faster water.

Have a go bag ready for all members of your family including any pets ahead of the storm. Keep it where you can grab and get out of the way if there is flood waters. We could have left before the flood as we had plenty of warning but we didn't want to go with five animals. Had nowhere to go actually After the storm even though the water didn't rise for 3 days the trees were down all over the neighborhood and county. Think if you should leave before the storm arrives and if not how you would exit your home if you are surrounded by water and it is rising. You don't want to be trapped in your home. If needbe keep an axe in an attic to use to climb up on a roof.

Have insurance info, important papers and numbers handy and in water safe area.

When tragedy strikes there will be NO power, no clean water, and even in our case we couldn't even use the toilets after the flooding started too much water infiltrated the sewers. The first thing I did that morning when I saw the water crest over our main road into our pond out back was take a shower. And had my husband walk our 6 lb toy poodle who was in agony the rest of the afternoon and night wanting to go outside while we were totally surrounded by water. He wouldnt use the piddle pad I put down for him in an upstairs shower until the next morning. Poor guy!

You will need LOTS of WATER at home. I am a prepper, but realize there is not much I can do if we flood here. I had plenty of bottled water even had water stacked in our attic area We used the stacked water to wash dishes from our refridge and freezer when we got back after the flood. I used up 6 large containers just to wash those dishes. My extra dried food stores were upstairs but no way to use them as we were flooded out of the home.

We never put in a generator here but were planning to buy and install one. It would have been underwater. So glad we never bought it. My neighbors all lost theirs in the flood. We have a small generator not a whole house one in case power goes out from an ice storm. Get yourself one if you can even if it requires gas/propane so you can save your freezer items if you have a separate freezer, Insurance will only cover $500 worth of food in a fridge. We claimed it.... but had a big freezer too and lost a lot of food. Only thing our insurance covered was that. We had FEMA insurance.

Do you have a second story to your home at all where you could potentially store items you wish to keep if you do flood? Do you have a crawl space/basement or are you on a slab. It will flood fast if you are on a slab. We had a 5 foot crawl space. So had roughly a foot in our first floor. It doesn't matter if you have 4 inches or 4 feet in your home. You will need to strip down to the baseboards up to 4 feet (wallboard panels come in 4 feet sheets) to mitigate your home so you don't have mold or mildew build up after the flood. And everything needs to be sanitized and we even had a mold specialist come in and test everything before we closed up the house again. After the wood completely dried up it was spray painted with white paint that had mold killer in it just in case.

As for what we would do differently. If it happens again, we would mitigate the home take our money and run. I would never rebuild this home again. It was a nightmare. Ended up in court with our original builder who built this home two years before the flood. I had some very custom features I wanted him to restore. He was cutting corners everywhere he could even though our contract stated he would rebuild it to the original build. We held back paying him in full until everything was done. Our lawyer said that was legit based on our contract. The builder even took cabinets he made and installed in our rebuilt home as collateral. Even took off the knobs and sanded the panels on the doors down on both sides and finally returned them after we sicked the county sherrif after him with a warrant. This after 3 letters from our lawyers to return the doors and drawers! Apparently the judge didn't believe he had stolen our cabinets and drawers even though our lawyer said it was a felony. We lost our court case with him, unfortunately, bc the judge believed he took them to fix them. After builder stole them we didn't want him back to finish. So according to judge we had to pay him for the remainder we owed him we reneged on the contract.. So he either paid off the judge or we ended up with a very dumb judge in a kangaroo court who didn't understand the case. Judge was a Democrat appointed by our Dem governor.