Your basement flooded in a storm: what to do in NY and NJ

Before you go down the stairs

Water and live outlets share the floor. If the electrical panel is in the basement and the water is anywhere near it, do not wade to it. Call the utility and ask them to cut power at the meter, or have an electrician do it. If the panel is upstairs or the water is well away from it, switch off every breaker that feeds the basement before you step in.

Two more checks. If you smell gas, leave the house and call the gas company from outside. A flooded furnace or water heater can put out its pilot and the gas keeps flowing. And if a floor drain or toilet backed up along with the rain, the water on the floor is contaminated. Treat it as sewage, keep children and pets out, and read our sewage backup guide before you touch anything.

Photograph everything before you move anything

This is the step people skip because they want the water gone. Take the pictures first. Your phone puts a time stamp on each one, and that record is what an adjuster works from.

• The high-water line on the walls, on the stairs, and on the furnace and water heater.
• Every room, from the doorway, then close-ups of floors, baseboards, and anything stored on the floor.
• Each damaged item where it sits: furniture, boxes, appliances, the contents of closets.
• The sump pit, the window wells, and the outside grade and downspouts. These show where the water came from.
• A slow video walkthrough narrating what you see. It takes two minutes and catches what the photos miss.

Which policy pays for storm water

Standard homeowners policies exclude flood, meaning surface water or groundwater that rises from outside and comes in through walls, floors, or window wells. That loss is covered by a flood policy through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private flood carrier, if you carry one. Sewer backup and sump pump failure are a separate endorsement on many homeowners policies. Wind-driven rain that comes in through a roof the storm damaged is usually a homeowners claim.

The source of the water decides the claim, so document it and call your agent the same day. We work with carriers and bill them directly on covered water losses, and plenty of storm cleanups are paid by the homeowner without a claim at all. Either way the job starts the same.

What the crew does, in order

First the water comes out. Truck-mounted or portable extraction pulls standing water and the water held in carpet and pad. Then the wet porous materials go: carpet pad, soaked boxes and cardboard, and drywall cut to a set height above the water line so the framing behind it can dry. Hard floors and concrete are cleaned. Where the water was contaminated, everything it touched gets an antimicrobial treatment.

Then the drying. Air movers push air across every wet surface and dehumidifiers pull the moisture out of the room. We take moisture readings every day and stop when the framing and slab read dry, not when the surface looks dry. EPA guidance is to get materials dry within 24 to 48 hours to head off mold. In a warm September basement that clock is real, which is why same-day extraction matters more than anything else on this list.

Where it happens in our area

Tropical Storm Ida on September 1, 2021 is the recent reference point. The Passaic River basin towns, Passaic, Paterson, Clifton, and Wayne, took river flooding and sewer backups. The Ramapo came up at Suffern, Pascack Brook through Spring Valley, the Saw Mill and Bronx River valleys in Yonkers. In Hoboken and Jersey City the combined sewers surcharged and garden-level units flooded from below. None of that is unusual for a big rain event here. It is the pattern.

If you live near one of those watercourses, or your street has flooded before, treat a storm forecast as a reason to move stored items off the basement floor and test the sump pump before the rain, not after.

After the water is gone

The fixes that stop the next one are not complicated: a battery backup on the sump pump, downspouts that discharge well away from the foundation, covers on the window wells, and grading that slopes away from the house. Our guide on how to prevent basement flooding walks through each one.

If the water is in the basement now, call. Same-day emergency response, six days a week, and the inspection is free.