TOPIC: What kind of flood control system is this?

Blocks? That must have been the owner.  The guys that steal rims aren't that nice, they just drop it on the drums/rotors and leave you to figure out how to get a jack under the car again! LOL

Well, the owner must be very eccentric to have something like that installed in his home. It's like a gate valve that is used to cut water supply or stop water flow.

I actually saw a couple valves like this on the main sewer lines leaving the house down in Decator IL.  The house was about 125 years old.  They had two big valves on four inch piping within about 3 feet from each other and about four feet away from the foundation wall. They looked like boiler pipe valves on an old passive boiler system.

My college years flashed through my mind and I remember thinking what a horrible practical joke it would be to visit your friends house and close the valve on his sewer system just be for their dinner party.