The big trucks are still out in Whitefish Bay today. Five days after the horrific, already legendary rainstorm, a Carmax-sized assortment of vehicles clog the streets with words and phrases like "emergency," "disaster," "24-hour," "water damage," "hazardous," "disinfecting" and in the worst-case scenarios, "remodeling," painted on their side panels.

Between their presence and the already omnipresent details of stimulus-generated uber-construction crews, there is more heavy machinery in our village today than was used to build Hoover Dam.

This is round two. Friday and Saturday brought the first wave as residents pulled water-logged debris from their basements. Much of that was removed by Saturday night but more trash from the floods is stacked high again today.

People on the street are swapping disaster stories, asking each other "how much did you get?" There are terrifying tales of foundations collapsing in nearby neighborhoods. Those tales serve as a mental anesthetic for many of the townsfolk. My parkway may be stacked six feet high with junk but it could have been worse.

Junk dealers buzz around like kids at an Easter egg hunt. Most have beat-up trucks that have seen nine degrees of nasty but a few dealers cram mold-ridden trash into late model, four-door sedans.

Looking for soggy carpet? There's enough here to cover Miller Park. Among the items I saw not covered up by a 10-year supply of Hefty bags were drywall, paintings, cork bulletin boards, skateboards, assorted decaying furniture, paintings, and lamps.

One house had about 100 mildewed copies of "Scientific American" magazine. No amount of science expertise could have helped fend off the downpour last week.

Our library, a great center of our social interaction (we live the wild, wild life) which closed Friday, was open again today. "We were back open Saturday," one attendant proclaimed proudly. Bibliophiles of all ages gamely trudged on carpet-less stretches of flooring to check out new novels.

And now a great debate rages among villagers. After so many years of living here, do I really need a sump pump? We put one in and improved our drain tile after first moving here in 1989 and upgraded our model after getting some water in the relentless June rains of 2008. Among un-fun ways to spend money, it ranks in the top five. It can cost more than a ten-day trip for two to Paris. But our basement stayed bone dry last week. We feel extremely fortunate and our hearts go out to our neighbors who suffered damage.

Did we dodge disaster because of the sump pump or was it just plain good luck? Can't say for sure, but having the pump certainly didn't hurt.

The TV news crews were out looking for additional follow-up material. As a longtime veteran of the business, I can tell you that any story this big generates interest for many days and becomes a challenge of creative repetition. Photojournalists were straining to capture new angles of sodden, ratty couches. Reporters asked again, "How bad is it?"

The workers themselves, while earning a solid payday were nonetheless feeling a bit stretched in some cases. I heard one guy yell into a cell phone, "I'm at least one man short now, and it could be two by the end of the day."

One local company which deals in such dire occurrences advertised on its van that they would rectify the situation, "like it never happened." But despite their best efforts or anybody else's, it did happen. And sadly, it's still happening.