HELP - Basement Rental Flooding - Course of action

[Account Closed]

I am in need of some guidance on how to handle a situation. I am posting this in behalf of my in-laws who are the landlord of a rental affected.

The landlord was notified last night of flooding in the basement unit in a duplex (upstairs, downstairs configuration) (older home). Upon arrival we found at least 4 inches of water throughout the basement. The water was coming in from the storm drain in the stair well of the front door. With all the rain, and snow melt locally, the storm drains, and sewers are backed up. Many other homes in the valley are affected.

I went out to assist removing the water using a shop vac. With two shop vacs going, and and several industrial fans drying the ground, we were able to lower the water levels to fine puddles. I was able to cap off the storm drain, and slow down the water flow from the street (but I didn't stop it). However, when we went inside, we saw that there was water coming in from the walls. I believe it's just coming straight through the foundation into the house.

We've relocated the tenant to a hotel for the night, and it's looking like we will house him there for the next while. We determined that we can't stop the water from coming in, so we have determined that this is too much for us to handle until the rain / snow / snowmelt / saturated ground is over with.

I'm sure there is someone in the BP community that has faced a situation like this before, and I'm counting on you to help us out. What steps should we take? 

These factors we do know:

• The tenant cannot return to this place and will probably need to relocate.
• We will need to get a professional cleaning service / GC to come in and fix and prevent this from happening again.
• We have to contact insurance to determine what is covered in the home-owners.

[Steve Babiak]

@Sid Leibowitz suggested that if drywall is present that the lower portion be removed; I would suggest that you measure up about 48 inches to snap a chalk line and take out whatever drywall lies below that, so that you can use full sheets of drywall to replace the wet sections. The edge of the full drywall sheet is tapered, so that lets you have a cleaner (less bulging) joint where new meets old in the middle of the wall - so less noticeable.