Many of you have called or emailed asking if we are safe. The good news is that our house(s) are in no danger of being flooded. But unfortunately that is where the good news stops. In a nutshell we are expecting significant flooding at Lucky Pawz which has already begun.
Here is how it all began. Last Saturday Jim (our business partner) called and said the river behind LP is expected to flood so we should be aware. We all sort of joked that we might go under. By Monday we were frantically sandbagging as we knew we might get some water but it shouldn't be a lot. We built a wall around all our buildings 3 sandbags high, it took us about 8 hours and we had probably 30-50 people helping. Many of those people were friends and family of ours as well as friends and family of our employees. Also we had a few people just show up and ask if they could help, genuinely nice people who had no vested interest in saving our business. To our friends and family we appreciate all your hardwork and devotion to helping us. We had been told that our buildings took on no water in the flood of 93 and at that point no one though this flood would be worse, in fact at the beginning of the week we thought water would be lower than in 93. So we sandbagged "just in case."
By Wednesday we started getting projections that the flood was going to be worse than anyone thought. Downtown Cedar Rapids had been evacuated due to their rising flood waters and Jake had a difficult time even getting home due to traffic. We immediately headed down to add more layers to our sandbag walls, we built them from 3 high to 6 sandbags high. The outpouring of volunteers was again overwhelming. We had many of our own customers out helping, and many people from the community along with the previous help from Monday. We probably had about 75 people helping out. We never imagined that the water could go over our wall with the new height. We opened for business as usual on Thursday and started developing our potential back up plan if we were evacuated. Our landlord had a small building that we could move dogs to if we did have to evacuate. We started unloading file cabinets and moving computers. About 3pm we got word we were being mandatorily evacuated starting at 4pm. We immediately put our plan into high gear; we moved kennels to the evacuation site and began constructing a temporary location for our boarding dogs. We called the owners of the daycare dogs and gave them the bad news. By Thursday night we had moved all 26 boarding dogs, cleared as much of our important items from Lucky Pawz as possible, shut off the gas and electric and vacated. I think at that point we were all numb.
Jake and I headed home down the Coralville strip as usual, we didn't expect we would be driving through a foot of water in the road. So many of the restaurants were under feet of water, it was and still is surreal. By 11:30 last night we had contacted all of the owners of the dogs we had moved to inform them their pets were safe and dry. They were so thankful we had taken good care of their dogs. Although we closed our daycare operation we have so far been able to honor all our boarding reservations at our temp location. It isn't ideal and it definitely isn't the Lucky Pawz everyone is used to but we are helping many people who can't get back to the area or others who themselves have lost their homes to the flood.
Today we operated out of our temporary location and got everything in order and organized. Our temporary location is in Iowa City down by the Volkswagon dealership off Hwy 1, it is not in the 100 or even 500 year flood plain but we are keeping an eye on the water because we know there is a chance we would have to evacuate once again. If that happens it might get really loud in our basement as we have NO where else to go.
As far as Lucky Pawz, it is now surrounded by water. We have been told that the water is just below the top of our sandbag wall and the river is expected to rise another 5 feet before it crests on Tuesday. At this point we are hopeful that the water will go down as quickly as possible so we can assess the damage and get a plan in order to get back up and running. Unfortunately we have no idea how high the water can go, but we are not going to let the water stop us from getting back up and running. We have a lot of work ahead but we know we can do it!
If you would like to keep up with what is happening you can always go to our website http://www.luckypawz.com/; http://www.kcrg.com/; or http://www.press-citizen.com/
At this point we are exhausted mentally and physically. We are trying to stay positive and see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have some amazing pictures which I will upload as soon as I can and as I get more I will try to get them on here. Please keep everyone in our area in your thoughts, we could use some right now!
Thanks to all of you for thinking of us and sending emails and leaving phone messages. Overall it's been one of the hardest weeks of our lives, but as Jake said, it could always be worse.
Here is how it all began. Last Saturday Jim (our business partner) called and said the river behind LP is expected to flood so we should be aware. We all sort of joked that we might go under. By Monday we were frantically sandbagging as we knew we might get some water but it shouldn't be a lot. We built a wall around all our buildings 3 sandbags high, it took us about 8 hours and we had probably 30-50 people helping. Many of those people were friends and family of ours as well as friends and family of our employees. Also we had a few people just show up and ask if they could help, genuinely nice people who had no vested interest in saving our business. To our friends and family we appreciate all your hardwork and devotion to helping us. We had been told that our buildings took on no water in the flood of 93 and at that point no one though this flood would be worse, in fact at the beginning of the week we thought water would be lower than in 93. So we sandbagged "just in case."
By Wednesday we started getting projections that the flood was going to be worse than anyone thought. Downtown Cedar Rapids had been evacuated due to their rising flood waters and Jake had a difficult time even getting home due to traffic. We immediately headed down to add more layers to our sandbag walls, we built them from 3 high to 6 sandbags high. The outpouring of volunteers was again overwhelming. We had many of our own customers out helping, and many people from the community along with the previous help from Monday. We probably had about 75 people helping out. We never imagined that the water could go over our wall with the new height. We opened for business as usual on Thursday and started developing our potential back up plan if we were evacuated. Our landlord had a small building that we could move dogs to if we did have to evacuate. We started unloading file cabinets and moving computers. About 3pm we got word we were being mandatorily evacuated starting at 4pm. We immediately put our plan into high gear; we moved kennels to the evacuation site and began constructing a temporary location for our boarding dogs. We called the owners of the daycare dogs and gave them the bad news. By Thursday night we had moved all 26 boarding dogs, cleared as much of our important items from Lucky Pawz as possible, shut off the gas and electric and vacated. I think at that point we were all numb.
Jake and I headed home down the Coralville strip as usual, we didn't expect we would be driving through a foot of water in the road. So many of the restaurants were under feet of water, it was and still is surreal. By 11:30 last night we had contacted all of the owners of the dogs we had moved to inform them their pets were safe and dry. They were so thankful we had taken good care of their dogs. Although we closed our daycare operation we have so far been able to honor all our boarding reservations at our temp location. It isn't ideal and it definitely isn't the Lucky Pawz everyone is used to but we are helping many people who can't get back to the area or others who themselves have lost their homes to the flood.
Today we operated out of our temporary location and got everything in order and organized. Our temporary location is in Iowa City down by the Volkswagon dealership off Hwy 1, it is not in the 100 or even 500 year flood plain but we are keeping an eye on the water because we know there is a chance we would have to evacuate once again. If that happens it might get really loud in our basement as we have NO where else to go.
As far as Lucky Pawz, it is now surrounded by water. We have been told that the water is just below the top of our sandbag wall and the river is expected to rise another 5 feet before it crests on Tuesday. At this point we are hopeful that the water will go down as quickly as possible so we can assess the damage and get a plan in order to get back up and running. Unfortunately we have no idea how high the water can go, but we are not going to let the water stop us from getting back up and running. We have a lot of work ahead but we know we can do it!
If you would like to keep up with what is happening you can always go to our website http://www.luckypawz.com/; http://www.kcrg.com/; or http://www.press-citizen.com/
At this point we are exhausted mentally and physically. We are trying to stay positive and see the light at the end of the tunnel. I have some amazing pictures which I will upload as soon as I can and as I get more I will try to get them on here. Please keep everyone in our area in your thoughts, we could use some right now!
Thanks to all of you for thinking of us and sending emails and leaving phone messages. Overall it's been one of the hardest weeks of our lives, but as Jake said, it could always be worse.
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