Help the Camerons through the great basement flood of 2024.

Hi, Terra here. My husband Phil and I have been married for 20 years (blind date turned high school sweethearts). Gratefully, we have had more ups than downs in our lives. Two of the ups are our amazing daughters. Our eldest is 17 in her senior year of high school. Our youngest turns 13 this Friday. We are so proud of the people they are growing into. I work as a wound nurse with Veterans at our local VA, and my husband has spent his entire career as a Clinical Laboratory Technologist at our local hospital. We love animals, Halloween, all things creepy and weird, corny dad jokes, and each other. Each year we create a huge Halloween display in our front yard for the community (and ourselves because… HALLOWEEN) which draws quite a crowd. We make a lot of our own props and love the visitors' faces when they come to take a stroll through the display and stop to take pictures. People leave saying they can’t wait to come back next year or that their kid has been begging to stop by for weeks.

Unfortunately, we won’t be doing a display this year because one of life’s downs popped up. We had planned a birthday vacation for my husband, and when we returned, our home that we bought back in 2016 had sprung a leak in the basement. We thought we had left the pool behind at the vacation hotel (bad joke inserted here). It was a contaminated water leak, and insurance has labeled it a category 3 loss. Most of our common living area, our laundry room, and master bedroom were in the basement, and there is little to be salvaged. We are blessed that our daughters' rooms were on the upper level, so their special belongings should be spared.

So far, we have been able to get emergency housing for the four of us and our beloved pets (Yorkie, 3 cats, 2 bunnies, 3 rats). We are staying in a hotel until we can get a rental property while the damage is repaired. We can’t stay there right now because the flood was contaminated water.

Our computer and printer that are used for school work were down there. I have reached out to the school district to see about any assistance in getting a computer and reliable internet access so the girls can keep up their studies and good grades, but it isn’t looking too hopeful or timely.

I am going to be off work for a few weeks making demo, salvage, repair, and emergency housing arrangements while trying to keep it all together for our little family. I have only been at my current job for a year and one month, so all the paid leave I had built up was used for vacation. To summarize, my leave for this unexpected event will be unpaid, so we will have half the income but a lot of extra expenses.

Over the years, we have helped many friends and family when they found themselves needing emergency housing. We were blessed to have the space and funds to assist them with a safe place to live until they were able to rebuild their lives and move on.

It looks like it is our turn to seek assistance, and I’m wishing on the stars that the universe witnessed our help to others and saved some help for us. Thank you. Blessed be, and may you always feel safe and loved.

With gratitude,

The Cameron Family