Help the Kosinski Family Rebuild After Flood

The Kosinski family lost almost everything during the flash floods on the early morning of Sunday, August 10th. There was at least 14 feet of water in our basement that started coming up to our main level of the house through the stairs. Water began to come through the foundation and every door of the house because of the pressure. Pipes burst. In the middle of the night, we had no choice but to bring Karsyn with us up to the small top level of our house, give Brewski our dog some calming chews, grab emergency food and diapers with us, and hope we could get out in the morning.

Nothing in our basement can be saved or kept and much on our main level needs to go as well. We have filled up our curb 10 times already with bags and furniture and have not even made a dent in our house. Everything will need to be gutted. Both of our cars flooded completely and are totaled. We cannot stay in our house.

Insurance is not going to cover a dime for us or anyone in our neighborhood.

We had so much in our finished basement! Our two year old son, Karsyn, lost most of his toys we had stored in the basement for toy rotations and TONS of books. We lost our washer, dryer, basement bar, massive workout area/gym, tool bench and tools, stockpile of drinks and food, deep freezers, childhood memories, couches, TVs, entertaining table, clothing, winter gear, and so much more we have yet been able to unbox. On our first floor, we will need to replace all things wood on the ground that we were not able to raise like furniture including Karsyn's crib and all our dressers and storage cubes. We also need to knock out a few inches of the wall and remove the insulation.

We were also saving all of his baby things for a future addition to our family. We lost everything that is used in the first two years of a child's life including 5 breast pumps/ mobile pumps, bottles, baby carriers, car seats, bouncers, Owlet, 2000 breast milk bags, 100's of saved diapers.... you name it, we lost it! (We are not ready to request any donations of materials at this time as we just have nowhere to go with it! But in the future, this may be a request!)

Many are asking: How can you help? We are in the process of removing everything from our basement with the help of others and filling dumpster after dumpster that the city is providing. After this, the restoration company is coming in to see our next steps. We are not in a place to have things dropped off at our door as we do not have anywhere to go with it. In the near future, we have debated starting an Amazon wishlist but just need the house to be cleared before we can sit down and do this.

Many of you know, Mike and Amanda are the last people to help for support of any kind and often will turn you down, but we just do not know at this point how we are going to recover from this.

If you were to see this through the eyes of our two year old, he is living his best life as he is just seeing the outpouring of support and dancing in the puddles. He is the reason that we are still going and working even though it at times seems like a completely lost cause and not worth anything. Another positive includes our neighborhood becoming the tightest family around trying to support each other even though we are all at a loss.

Thank you all for reading this far and for the support we have received this far and coming in the future.

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8/17 Update: With the help of family and friends, we were able to demo our basement and complete that restoration process ourselves. We are almost complete with this process on the main level of our house as well as Mike, friends, and family have spent countless hours removing kitchen flooring, trim, cutting out plaster, drywall, and removing soaked insulation. The next steps will be to continue to sanitize the entire home and ensure mold does not start to grow within the main level. In a few days, we will have a company come in to completely replace our AC, furnace, electrical, hot water heater, and pipes. After our essential services are restored, we will then transition to replacing the main level insulation, drywall, backing, trim, and completely replacing our kitchen floor. Our vehicles have officially been totaled and were only given 5 days to return the rentals as insurance will not cover past then and have to work on finding new vehicles for both Mike and I.

Although we are still months away from getting back to our lives and not sure when we will be able to move back into our home or get Brewski back from Mike's parent's, we have made incredible progress due to the amazing people in our lives.