Meet Sheryl Fancher. With her husband Ron, Sheryl has lived for 18 years in a Colonial style home the couple owns on Melvina Street that was built in 1946.

In September 2023 she related the multilayered trauma of basement flooding:

“We’ve lived there for 18 years and we have had a flooding in our basement when we've had hard rain. We have gone down in the basement and the rain, the water has been knee-deep from having all the flooding in our basement. We have a compromised furnace. We’ve had our furnace guy come out and he talked about, because there’s so much moisture in the basement that it’s going to cause problems for furnace, electronics. We have TVs and stuff down there, so you’re going to have problems like that. We also have had to have compromised our hot water heater. We’ve had to replace a washer, a dryer. We have to put our dryers. We’ve got a new dryer. We have to put ’em up on bricks. Right. Does that sound familiar?

“We’ve lost retro furniture, TV lamps. Our outlets have to be up higher because just like she was saying, you walk around down that water and you could get electrocuted.

“My husband has been very creative and he’s a good thinker of how to solve problems, and so we got a sump pump. My husband also orchestrated a spout unit where he put it and it comes out of the sub pump and it’s facing the alley. He pushed the water out in the alley area there. He’s also put dirt around the foundation of the house to try to support keeping the water out, and we have lost carpet, tile, drywall. We had a shower down there. We’ve lost that and just adding up everything. I think we figured it was about $35,000.”