This is intended to be a neighbors’ forum for people affected by the August 20 flood in Shorewood Hills. 

We’ve all been working to clean up our homes and yards. We’ve all been working our way through insurance claims and financial decisions. We all want to see the Village and the city of Madison engineer the storm-water system so that such a thing can’t happen again, while at the same time we're fortifying our homes in the event it does. We’ve done little for the last month but research how to achieve all this. 

So let’s share what we’ve learned. Lengthy email chains aren’t ideal for any number of reasons. Maybe this blog will be better. (Or maybe not. We’ll see.) The idea is to create a group conversation that doesn't clutter up our in-boxes. 

The initial categories for comments are these:

General

For anything that isn’t easily categorized, including emails written previous to the blog.

Municipal mitigation

For information about what caused the flooding and what can be done by the city of Madison and the Village to prevent more of it.

Home repair

For comments about repairing and fortifying our houses and yards. This is where you’d go to ask about basement windows, ductwork, floor drains, good contractors, bad contractors, finding a contractor, and such.

Insurance

For comments about dealing with your insurance company and also about getting flood insurance (or not) in the future.

Financial resources

For comments about how to find the money to rebuild. 

This has all been crudely slapped together by Nancy Holyoke (920 Columbia), in an effort to get something started. The hope is that if people find this format useful, others will refine the site to make it more useful.