(This story does not appear in When the River Rose.)

My department at the hospital where I work was wonderful about arranging time off for me. I was basically told to take the time that I needed, which was an amazing gift. They wanted to do more, but I initially thought there was little they could do from Burlington.

A few days after the flood, we realized that we needed to dry out the house, and do so quickly, if we wanted to escape the threat of mold and rot. Steve tried to locate some dehumidifiers – we had one before the flood, but it had been in the basement and thus was submerged and ruined – but the stores were all out and local friends’ machines were spread far and wide with so many wet houses. I put a call in to my department asking if anyone could loan us dehumidifiers or fans.

The next morning we got to our house to start working and found a big collection of dehumidifiers and fans sitting on our front porch. One of the attending physicians had shuttled around to department members’ homes to collect the machines and then driven down to deliver them to our home. I burst into tears at the sight: love in the time of Irene.

My program director showed up that afternoon with still more machines to loan. We had 10 dehumidifiers running 24/7 for more than a week. At first we were pulling in excess of 20 gallons of water each day out of the house. By the time we measured the moisture content of any wood it was down to 8%, which I think may have been drier than it was before the flood.

The FAHC Anesthesia Department played a big part in saving our home.

- Amy Odefey