Around 1am on 08/17/25, we were home. Me, my fiancé, and our two boys (1-year-old turning 2 in October and a 3-month-old). It was raining super hard as it had been recently, so we didn’t think anything of it. 30 minutes passed, our oldest runs to the kitchen and comes back laughing, screaming, "Help me, Mommy, Daddy!" We get up laughing and BAM, one of our worst nightmares: water is coming from our bathroom and front door. Panicking, we grabbed blankets trying to block under the doors. We ran around trying to just move everything we could off the floor. We called our landlord, who lives on the 1st floor, and he started helping us move as much as we could and take our kids upstairs. But the water was coming so fast we could only save so much. The pictures provided are of what couldn’t be salvaged and after we had got some water out.

We’re usually super private, but this took us by surprise. It left us with no place of our own. We lost so much of our sons' stuff, our clothes, our stove, stuff me and my fiancé worked so hard for. I know so much of Chicago feels our pain, either in the same situation or having family that went through it last night/this morning.

We don’t expect much, but at this point, we are just trying everything so we can get back our space for our kids. We are grateful for anything and everything.