If anyone has any good luck to sprinkle around, John Kaplan might take a teaspoonful from you.
No sooner had Kaplan vacuumed up the last bucket of flood water from his basement last week, a 40-foot tree fell on his detached Hamilton home during last Thursday’s windstorm.
Thankfully, no one was injured by the falling tree, with his roof and car port taking the brunt of the impact.
Kaplan was still in clean-up mode from the previous week’s rainstorm, which flooded the four-foot-deep ditch which runs in front of his Gilley Road home.
A blockage further along the drainage system, near a local pump station, is thought to have caused the flooding, which eventually seeped into his furnished basement.
And Kaplan is now questioning if excess ditch water is partly responsible for weakening the roots of the giant tree, which has been outside his home for more than the 20 years he has lived there.
“It could be a coincidence, but I doubt it,” Kaplan told the Richmond News, chuckling at his bad luck.
“Merry Christmas, eh? I wonder what else could go wrong? At least no one got hurt.”
A reconstruction team were at Kaplan’s property the same day, chopping up the offending tree and, the next day, tarping up the damaged roof.
The News told last week how Kaplan, a magician to trade, couldn’t make the water disappear from his prized 1950s-themed basement, decanting about 26 shop vac buckets-full during the rainstorm.
The City of Richmond said debris has been an issue in the canals leading to the pump station near Kaplan’s home and crews removed debris from the canal.
This allowed the water to drain to the station unrestricted and alleviated the issue.
