Larry Biddle and Peggy Jones watched as the sewer outside their home struggled to keep up with the downpour Friday evening.

They had been flooded before — a few inches here, a foot there. A flood in August 1986 taught them to keep precious items on sawhorses and high shelves.

They thought they were ready for this storm.

They certainly never imagined water would rise high enough to push through their basement windows, flooding the partly-remodeled room to its rafters.

But that, they said, is just what happened.

“It came rushing in there like Niagara Falls, and within five minutes it was full,” said Biddle, 61, who lives at 7525 40th Ave. in Kenosha.

“I was afraid that the whole house was going to cave in,” his fiancée Peggy Jones, 45, added. “Even from the cracks in the floor, it was bubbling up.”

On Monday, Jones and Biddle sifted through the wreckage, through the twigs and leaves that littered the floor and walls, the bins of soaked summer clothes, the washing machine filled with rain water, the ruined leather couch and chair, even the $250 worth of meat meant for an upcoming family cookout.

That got pitched in the garage after Jones saw the stand-alone freezer floating up her basement stairs. Biddle planned to take the meat to the dump, but it was closed Monday. He hopes to unload the smelly mess today, for a $5 fee payable to the city.

That small fee illustrates what Biddle and Jones see as the bad-to-worse nature of their situation.

Not only did their house flood, maybe making it unlivable — they don’t know; they can’t get anyone to come out and inspect it — but since the waters went down, Jones and Biddle said they haven’t been able to get a single insurance agent, city or federal official to help them.

After more than a half-dozen calls, Jones wondered if it was worth it to keep trying.

“I don’t know if we should pack up the stuff and foreclose and let the city deal with it. I’m to the point where, if nobody wants to help me, the city can condemn it. It’s junk,” she said.

Their watery escape

Biddle has lived in his home since 1981.

Five years after he moved in, he said he had to replace an entire basement wall because it collapsed in a summer flash flood.

Since then, he’s been flooded probably six times, each time with a foot of water or less.

He took it as the price he paid for living in a somewhat low-lying area with a street drain that barely keeps up with rain water.

Then Friday happened.

It was about 7:30, 8 p.m. when the storm drain started backing up and the water began to rise, first around his neighbors — Hungry Head and House of Gerhard restaurants — and then in his yard.

Biddle said the water rose about 10 inches in his backyard, before it burst through two basement windows.

Jones quickly realized she and Biddle could be in real danger.

“We had to get what we could — the cats, my purse, the cell phone — and get out of there,” she said.

Even that wasn’t easy.

Jones and Biddle said the water rose so fast that by they time they got to the garage, the water was up to the doors on Jones’ Dodge Ram Rumble Bee truck.

“We couldn’t get the doors closed,” Biddle said.

When they finally got to higher ground, Jones said, “I just sat in my truck and cried. There was nothing we could do.”

From bad to worse

If Peggy felt like crying Friday, she was ready to scream by Monday.

Her phone calls — and her “run around,” as she called it — started almost immediately.

The fire department said it couldn’t come because of the electrified standing water in her house, although if it had been on fire, firefighters could have helped.

We Energies told her they couldn’t shut off the electricity for two days, despite the standing water in her house.

As of late Monday morning, Jones still hadn’t heard from her insurance agent, although someone from the company called Sunday to explain a $5,000 check would be sent, but no adjuster.

Biddle and Jones were floored to learn that if a tornado had hit their house or a hurricane had flooded the basement, the damage would be entirely covered. Instead, they would get a maximum of $5,000.

“My insurance company says we had a rider on there for the sump pump — if it didn’t work, or if (water) comes up through the floor drain — for $5,000. Otherwise, they said we didn’t have flood insurance,” Biddle said.

But, Jones said, “We can’t get flood insurance because they said we don’t live in a floodplain. Well, we do live in a floodplain. That little girl in the Kenosha News (on Saturday), the picture of her fishing — that’s my house.”

Jones called the city, too.

The health inspector’s office referred her to Neighborhood Services and Inspection, where Jones said someone told her the house could be deemed unlivable, but a neighbor would have to file the claim. Even then, Jones said she was warned, she could be ticketed for having an unlivable house.

Jones called an alphabet soup of federal agencies, and left a message with the Kenosha County Disaster Hotline.

Biddle was skeptical anyone would call back, but Jones spoke to a county emergency management worker Monday afternoon.

Their house would be among the hundreds considered for state aid, the worker said.

Jones is too tired and worried to be relieved.

“We’ll see,” she said. “She can’t guarantee anything. We have to just wait.”