Typhoon Parma/Peping Aftermath!

This is what we woke up to on October 8, 2009! At about 6 p.m. the night before the electricity went off. Around 8:00 p.m. we decided to bring some of our water jugs upstairs and also some food. All during the night we heard the pounding rain -- I would get up to check what it looked like outside. As the night progressed I would say, "oh no, I can't see the slope up into the driveway." I went downstairs for some reason about 10:00 p.m. and noticed the bathroom was full to the lip with water. I told Rick --there was nothing we could do, we just grabbed more food. Later on it was "oh, my gosh, I can't see the bottom of the tires." An hour or so later, it was "oh, oh--I can't see the top of the tires" (this was about midnight). Within another hour I said,"the water is up to the bottom of the window" and the rain was still coming down.
We watched is disbelief as the downstairs fulled with water! It was bubbling up underneath the floor at the bottom of the stairs like a mini volcano! It was surreal. We were helpless to do anything about it -- so we just watched as the downstairs took on about 3 feet of filthy, stinky water! It is now the wee hours of the next morning and we were exhausted.
Realizing there was nothing to be done we went to bed. We slept for a few hours, then got up hoping the water level had begun receding. No such luck! It was still raining, not as hard but still steady. We looked out our balcony and there on the next door balcony was Fay, our neighbor, her family AND her next door neighbor, her 2 children, plus Bot the construction worker. All were stranded upstairs in the vacant apartment next door.
Fay and company had no food, we had no way to get some of ours to them. We were not about to walk down into that filthy water to retrieve food. Bot, the construction worker jumped down into the water and walked right underneath our balcony so he could catch some of the food we had brought up the night before, to take back to the stranded neighbors.
About 3 hours later they needed more food -- we hadn't given them much because we didn't have much. We explained we weren't walking down in that dirty water, we could give Bot the key to the door but the screen door was locked and it wouldn't do any good. He then proceeds to walk up the ledge leading to our balcony. We let him in and he went downstairs and started gathering food off the shelf that we told him he could take and what we wanted him to give to us.
He took the much needed food next door and shared with all of the neighbors. Fay had a small baby who was cold so we gave her our brand new blanket to sleep on. All day we watched the swift moving river that use to be our street! Even though we could see it with our own eyes, it was hard to believe! Later in the day the rain dwindled to a sprinkle but it never let up till late in the evening and the water never went down!
Upon arising the next morning we could see the water level was subsiding and there wasn't so much as a sprinkle! Good news!
The smell of the water was putrid but it still wasn't lower than our rain boots so our hands were tied. We just kept our eye on the water and knew that once it went down we had a lot of work to do.
By about 2:30 p.m. on Oct. 10, 2009 we ventured downstairs into our flooded apartment. The frig had been floating in the water for 2 days, the couch and chairs were completely ruined. They were now a memory! That was a crying shame too because they were SO comfortable!
We had only been in the cleaning process for about a half hour when two "angels of mercy" came to our door and asked "Can we help you clean up?" I thought for a slip second -- I must be dreaming!! I was not. They helped us get all the water, then the mud out of our apartment. We did it with their help in about 2 1/2 hrs. That in and of itself was unbelievable!!