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ICYMI: In Case You Missed It

Just 20 delectable selectables from the store. Go on.

SINCE YOU ASKED: “What do you do when it floods?”

Brandon the landlord was pretty sure his rentals were protected when the drops of rain started to come down Wednesday evening. So when the rain stopped after only twenty-three minutes, he went home to Malverne to make dinner and go about the rest of his evening routine. He put some Crest on his brush when a burst of notifications appeared on his home screen. All of them from “Keith - 803 Halsey 🔧”.

Without checking his phone, Brandon the landlord put his toothbrush down, grabbed his car keys from the hooks in the vestibule, zipped up his blue Columbia jacket, and drove the thirty-five minutes on the Belt Parkway to see with his own eyes what the notifications read: “the basement is flooded”.

“The basement dun flooded boss”, Keith the super said. “I see”, said Brandon the landlord. He took stock of the twenty-three Amazon boxes of his tenant’s stuff now soaked by twenty-three minutes of rain water.

Keith and Brandon pulled the sump pump out from the drain in the middle of the room. They disconnected the one-inch hose that piped out into the ceiling. To handle the one and a half inches of rain that fell in twenty-three minutes a sump pump is needed. “Looks like it didn’t work”, Keith the super said. “I see”, said Brandon.

Brandon the landlord walked in his wet sneakers up the hatch stairs to drive to Home Depot on Nostrand. Keith the super lifted the sump pump off and began hammering the entirety of it against an I-beam. The motor kicked off. Keith rang Brandon, “ok I dun got it to work”. Brandon the landlord pulled over to call his tenants. He went to voicemail.

“Hey, Steve. It’s Brandon. I got a little bit of a news for you. Well, maybe a big news for you. We did get flooded again. I..I..I gotta say, like, I don’t know what happened. I think it’s because of this, like, massive amount of rain. And one of the one one of the sewer yeah. The return in the back over there was open. Flat open. Yeah. I do have a yeah. It looks like you know, I’m I’m here with, actually, the super too. He’s he’s been helping me, just to make sure that things are working. The pump what happened with the pump is that it didn’t function. It did not function because I think it was it was dirty or something like that. And so so the Keith actually took took the pump out, And he kinda just hit it, and then, like, it started working again. Oh, man. Okay. So tomorrow, I got a the electrician I mean, the the plumber to come to come by and give us some more options here. Okay? I’m sorry to give you a news at this time. Okay? Alright. We’re here, just assessing the issue here. Alright. Talk to you later. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye.”

The next morning, at 8:35am, Brandon the landlord sent us a text: “I’ll be there in ten minutes”. I replied, “Come in 15 instead. I need to get a coffee.” And I left. When I returned, holding my largeass iced coffee, Brandon the landlord was already in the basement.

“Look Steve… I’m not sure what to say. It’s just an act of God at this point. The boiler in the winter and now this. It’s just bad luck. I’ve never had this happen to me, or to the other properties. We think the water came from the roof. But the pump… yea. It didn’t work. So we’ll add a flap to the pipe in the back and an industrial pump here in this well… I’m just so, so sorry…”

“… it’s all good. You’ll make the fixes. We’ll do what we can do - be zen about it”.