Along the lines of Krjack's story, I have been working for one of these TBTF bank's asset managers lately. I think she is out of Dallas. Anyway, they forclosed a subdivision down along the Columbia river near Bonneville. 60 lots, 10 completed new houses.

I got there and noticed that there was a pretty big creek almost uphill from the subdivision. I thought it was a little weird. Stepped off the driveway into the yard, and squish, like a sponge. I go into the first house and get ready to check the crawl space. It is the kind of crawl space where you enter from under the stairs. I swing my feet down in expecting to hit the ground, but it is way down there. My feet are running in the air and I fall into the space. It is about 5' to the ground level and I am sitting in 6" of water.

Apparently these lots were platted on the edge of a mapped floodway, and so they could not be graded up (displacing the floodway). So the solution was to build tall stemwalls and install sump pumps. Only they hadn't turned any of the pumps on after the buildings were complete. No better way to start the work day than to take a bath in a crawl space. I ended up doing all the crawls one after the other while I was wet (and frozen). Then I changed into the only other stuff I had for the rest of the work (rain-gear, extra tuffs, and a basketball jersey). Looked very professional.