FAMILY OVERCOMES MUSKOKA RIVER ‘NIGHTMARE’ WITH WALL BUILT OF LOVE

Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com

BRACEBRIDGE — So, what’s it like to be flooded?

To have your home full of water, a wall orange and white sand bags almost waist-high holding back three feet of water that threatens your personal space and sanity.

You need “light spirits” because “sometimes we need to be that way to get through this nightmare.”

That’s Sandy McCurdy a week into her nightmare on Riverbend Road in Bracebridge.

Her family’s modest home is on the Muskoka River near the Devil’s Elbow, not far from the mouth of the mighty river that empties in Lake Muskoka.

It’s the north end of Santa’s Village Road, which turns into Golden Beach Road near George Road.

It’s an island now, surrounded by a dike built with 3,000 bags of sand and lots of love.

Plastic bags that would make a nice beach if their contents were cut open and splayed across the front of her bay window.

A visit to their property on the weekend was to bear witness to one family’s struggle to save their home.

The interminable spirit that is the human anecdote to the rawness of nature.

“I may have been smiling on the sand bags, posing for the picture, but this is not a true representation of what ourselves or the rest of the people impacted by the flood have been feeling for the past six days,” she found time to write in a follow-up email Sunday.

“I know for ourselves it has been a very emotional journey and we are both physically and mentally exhausted.”

She and her husband Jeff Whitle, a prison guard at Beaver Creek in Gravenhurst, were overwhelmed by the flood and by the generosity of family, friends and strangers who came to their aid — rescue.

For days and nights — it must seem like an eternity — they have been coping, albeit relatively well given their state of emergency.

First it was a river of water pouring into their front living room that once looked out on a gentle giant, which they have loved since moving in just after the 2013 flood.

But they didn’t know there would be another “once in a hundred years” flood.

On a Saturday evening in which pizza boxes were piled up in the kitchen, their teen-aged kids and their friends were standing around a makeshift island buffet table thumbing their smartphones, it seemed normal, typical of a family gathering.

Except, a few feet away one teenage boy was sitting on the floor, bent forward rubbing his bare feet he said “ached.”

Neatly stacked beside him were piles of flooring lifted from living room floor in front of the small standalone fireplace.

And out that bay window, McCurdy could barely stare out now, was the Muskoka River, obscured by a huge row of hundreds of those sand bags that wrapped an orange ring around the perimeter of the postage stamp piece of land — now more appropriately than ever a waterfront property.

Around here were a dozen or more people — sisters, friends from work, friends of her kids — and a few new friends who simply came to help.

They were “the geniuses” she said who taught them how and where to put the sand bags they begged, borrowed and stole (from another township) to quench their home’s thirst for protection.

The people who were — maybe not exactly structural engineers — but who were able to by force of necessity and mother of invention build a fortress that allowed them to hold their breath when getting weather reports.

One friend said they always had to “have a plan B and a plan C.”

“The only thing that has helped keep us afloat so far (no pun attended) is the incredible out pouring of support and help from amazing friends, family, neighbours and volunteers in the community,” McCurdy said.

“They have been the true heroes to us and other flood-impacted families.

“I know when you’re feeling so defeated at times it’s just that hand on your shoulder letting you know your not alone is what carries you through it all.

“We will forever be thankful and moved by the willingness of others to want to help others in need.”

By that she means those angels who suddenly appeared with water wings and pickups and began shunting — without too much grunting — thousands of sand bags, which depending on who and how fast they were being filled, weighed 50- to 70 pounds.

Try loading onto a pickup truck a 100 bags and offloading them again. Then try carrying a bag or two at a time — one in hand to balance you — and see how much you love your neighbour.

Then also think about the 200 or so soldiers who tossed them through the air hand-to-hand a foot or two apart in green line of defence.

Now that’s the Canadian Armed Forces we’re proud to call our own at home and on the world stage.

McCurdy said they’ve all learned a lot new, about water pumps and how to keep them running 24/7. Each of the eight pumps (four they bought and four they rented) has their own personal attendant who provides much needed TLC.

“You do what you can to save your home,” she said, as Jeff cheerfully went about loading, unloading and going for more sandbags.

And as everybody trudged across their soggy septic bed to build a wall that some with bad backs (now) would argue should remain for the next flood.

Incredibly, they did all this while helping other neighbours between loads and taking all the furniture out of the house into safety, dry storage.

Which brings McCurdy out of her dream state and back to the nightmare at hand.

“I just hope in the end the flux of recent flooding disasters and State of Emergencies brings light to the government on the importance for some change.

“As global warming has changed, our weather patterns and old systems no longer are working.”

Luckily, McCurdy, Whitle and their family, friends and new friends are working — and still will be for more weeks ahead than they care to consider.

But if you need a hand, call them; they will come help — because they have some experience with flooding.