Excellent post, KenOTBC! Glad you made it through okay and that your wife learned a lesson, too.

Since everyone else is commenting on the sandbagged toilet, I'll go there too. One of my fears due to the location of my house is raw sewage coming out of the toilet in a flood. I have a "clean-out" tap to my sewer line and figured if things were looking bad I'd unscrew it and plug the line there somehow. Your idea seems much simpler but what about sinks and shower drains?

-Blast