KENOSHA COUNTY — What started with bowls and garbage cans has turned into days of cleanup for one Kenosha family after heavy rain left several inches of water in their finished basement.
Melissa Jahnke said she had only been asleep for about three hours Sunday morning when her husband woke her with unexpected news from downstairs.
Their youngest son, Knox, had discovered the flooding.
“Knox was like, ‘Oh Dad, you need to get down in the basement,’” Jahnke said.
Jahnke said there were about five inches of water in parts of the basement. She believes the heavy rainfall brought in more water than the family’s sump pump could handle.
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“We realized that the sump pump just couldn’t keep up,” she said.
Video from that morning shows the family scrambling to remove the water. Jahnke’s children used bowls to scoop it into garbage cans while her husband used a shop vacuum.
“They just had this instinct to grab bowls and scoop up water and fill up garbage cans,” Jahnke said. “We just tried everything we could to get the most amount of water out as quickly as possible.”
By Tuesday, the standing water was gone, but the basement was still far from dry. The water could still be squeezed from the saturated carpet.
Beyond the damage to the basement, Jahnke said some of the hardest losses were things that cannot easily be replaced.
The family was able to rescue cultural items stored in plastic totes, but a wicker basket containing memorabilia from Jahnke’s late father was damaged. Inside were keepsakes from their last trip to Cancun together and prayer cards from his funeral.
“There are some things that I was still able to save, so I’m grateful for what I was able to keep,” Jahnke said.
Jahnke said she knows her family is not alone, after seeing others share similar flooding experiences following the heavy rain.
For her family, the immediate focus is now drying out the basement, addressing the soaked carpet and determining what else can be saved.
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