Sump Pumps and Wet Vacs Are Climate Change Must-Haves

It was the sound of glass shattering. I raced around the house searching for broken windows because it was the only thing I could think of in that frazzled moment to explain the clamor. Then it hit me: The crashing sound wasn’t glass, it was a waterfall. In my home.

On June 8, a bizarrely intense rainstorm hit my region of New Jersey — a “once-in-a-lifetime” type of event, as one municipal building official and a parade of contractors and drainage experts would later put it. This wasn’t even a flood-prone area, so we, like many homeowners, hadn’t anticipated a problem. The prevailing theory is there was so much water that it had nowhere else to go but up — up through the window wells on the external perimeter of our finished basement.2 Eventually, the window seals gave way and Niagara Falls came pouring in from two sides, creating that distinct sound as the water smacked the tile floor before forming a pool between our newly built gym on one side and the place on the other side where a future baby’s playroom is meant to be. Our pandemic hoards of toilet paper went swimming.