Harrowing, Heartbreaking Tales and Worry Written in the Muck Left By Floods of 2014

Josh Solmayor is counting his blessings after the foundation of his family’s home collapsed, nearly crushing him. “As long as I’m fine and my family’s fine, materials are replaceable,” he said. (Screenshot: WJBK video)

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Josh Solmayor barely escaped the basement – and possible death – Monday after a loud boom alerted him to a wall about to collapse, giving the Warren teen the split seconds needed to bound up the stairs to safety.

“I would have been crushed and lost my life,” Solmayor, 16, said, recounting the harrowing experience for WJBK, Channel 2. His family’s home was among those heavily damaged when torrential rains caused some of the worst flooding in metro Detroit in 89 years.

Streets flooded, causing motorists to abandon their vehicles; sewers backed up in basements, leaving a foul mess behind; and, in the case of the Solmayor family, walls collapsed under the pressure of the onslaught of water.

The Warren teen’s dramatic and heroic story – he also lead his 91-year-old grandmother and 13-year-old sister to safety before the entire wall buckled – is one of hundreds surfacing as floodwaters that inundated the metropolitan area Monday recede.

Left behind in the fetid muck and mud of the Floods of 2014 along with waterlogged family keepsakes are insurance worries, economic hardship, death and even life after death.

| Tell us below in the comments: What’s your story of heroics, survival, gratefulness, frustration – insert the emotion you’re feeling – from the Floods of 2014? |

Warren Mayor Jim Fouts, whose community was particularly hard hit , said Friday that a woman presumed dead in the floods was actually alive. It’s not clear why the woman, who had a life-threatening medical condition and was unconscious after being rescued from 4 ½ feet of water, was declared dead. She improved on the way to the hospital and was released. That lowers the flood-related death toll in metro Detroit to two.

Solmayor is grateful he didn’t up the total to three.

“I’m not as heartbroken as you think I might be, because I almost lost my life,” Solmayor told WJBK. “As long as I’m fine and my family’s fine, materials are replaceable.”

Flood-Damaged Cars May Swamp Used Car Market

The receding waters expose new worries about those folks who inevitably exploit the disaster. Attorney General Bill Schuette has issued a pair of advisories, including one Friday warning that water-damaged vehicles could flood the used car market.

Cars that were submerged in water for several hours might look fine after a thorough detailing job, Marc Williams, manager of Auto Lab in Madison Heights, told the Detroit Free Press, but they’ll never run the same.

“When they’re completely submerged in water for a long period of time, if you drove your car into a lake, it’s different than driving in the rain,” Williams told the Free Press. “Those components could be compromised if corrosion sets in. Corrosion causes resistance, affects electrical circuits. If the electrical can’t get to where it needs to get to, the voltage can’t get through the wiring properly.”

Another advisory warned against home-repair scams.

“Dragging Our Lives to the Curb with Tears in Our Eyes”

In some other cases, post-flood exploitation feels more personal and raw.

Kathy Canapini of Royal Oak told Patch it’s upsetting to already stressed out residents see scavengers picking through the sewage-soaked items after they haul them to the curb from soggy basements.

Canapini worries that garbage crews might not pick up the more than 50 bags of debris she hauled to the curb because looters have ripped many of them open. She said many of her neighbors have had the same experience and share her concerns.

“We just find it very insensitive, besides it being a big health hazard,” Canapini said.

“It’s not just the ‘what if you sell it to an unsuspecting customer’ aspect, but the fact that we would be cleaning these things ourselves if we could,” she said. “We are dragging our lives to the curb with tears in our eyes, only to have them tear bags open and make a mess as they try to find something of value.”

(Patch Dow Jones News Fund intern Courtney Bledsoe contributed to this report.)

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