The picture below is taken just north of the neighborhood where my brother John lives with his family, as well as where my brother Fred's kids live with their mom. The rental homes of my dad and brothers are also located in this same area. Just about all of the nearly 30 rentals received some sort of water damage. The ones on higher ground just got a little water in the heat ducts. The lower ones near the front had water above the windows. They were quickly surrounded by a flashflood brought on by a week of hard rain and then an overnight rainfall of around 8 inches.
Fortunately, John's house (a new home that he and Fred built and John then moved into right before he got married in March) only received flood damage to his unfinished basement. Christie's house also had the basement fill with water, destroying her finished basement. Fortunately for her, unlike most residents, she does have a little insurance to help her with the expense. Because this is not in a flood plane, most people did not have flood insurance, including the rental houses.
Dad relayed an account to me of one of the residents. He had looked out the window after it had been raining all night and things looked like they were starting to subside. He looked out the window a few minutes later and he saw a wall of water rushing towards him. He was grabbing his keys, his money and his medication to get out. By the time he got out the door, the water was up to his chest. He was unable to escape the flood waters, and like all the other residents of the neighborhood, had to be rescued by a boat like the one below. A majority of the renters lost everything they own, including their vehicles. Mom said as she drove up yesterday afternoon, it was a very devastating sight to see all the furniture, vehicles, personal belongings, etc. all over the lawns.
Now it is a race against the clock to get these homes gutted to the studs to allow it to dry out before mold begins to grow (Temperatures there are currently in the 90's with about 50% humidity) and try to get as many of the residents back in as want to stay. Yesterday, Dad and Fred brought in the heavy equipment to get the clean up underway as the residents sorted through their things. Mom said there was a mountain of trash. With such widespread devastation, there is a shortage of many supplies, especially labor. Dad said he and Fred were quickly overwhelmed with the chore of gutting the three homes they worked on yesterday. They have to remove the doors, moldings, sheetrock, furnaces, a/c units, flooring, and all lower cabinets. They are hopeful to save the appliances. They will have to power wash the inch of mud that covers everything and then sanitize. Once it is all dried out, then the long task of rebuiding begins. My understanding is that more than a fifteen ward members are coming to help pitch in for the clean up effort today. I just wish I could be there to help.
This is where the rescuers were bringing stranded residents from my brother's neighborhood. They live just behind that tree row.
This middle picture shows what much of my Dad's farm ground looks like. He estimates a 75% loss of his crops for this year. I believe that this makes 3 out of about the last five or six years that local farmers have experienced this heavy of a loss due to rain and/or drought.
This is the bowling alley in town.
This is the same highway as above, just about a mile south. My brother lives between this picture and the top two.
This is where the rescuers were bringing stranded residents from my brother's neighborhood. They live just behind that tree row.
This middle picture shows what much of my Dad's farm ground looks like. He estimates a 75% loss of his crops for this year. I believe that this makes 3 out of about the last five or six years that local farmers have experienced this heavy of a loss due to rain and/or drought.
This is the bowling alley in town.
This is the same highway as above, just about a mile south. My brother lives between this picture and the top two.
I remember going through a couple of floods when I was a little girl. While the only damage we personally ever received from flooding was to crops in the fields, I have never forgotten the spirit of unity between friends and neighbors who put aside their differences to help one another. I found this article below in my hometown newspaper about one such good samaritan that I thought would be fun to share since I knew Larry growing up and the Pohlmans referred to were our butchers for our livestock. Larry lives just between Dad's subdivision (not the one he lives in, but one that he built) and the rentals houses. The second article is about one of the residents from the subdivision.
If you would like to see more pictures, go to www.wthitv.com , www.tribstar.com , or www.mywabashvalley.com . These are links to the local TV stations and newspapers that have even more astonishing video, pictures and articles.
’57 Allis-Chalmers becomes golden chariot for the stranded
By Mark Bennett/The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE — In bare feet, with her pant legs rolled up, Joan Pohlman pulled cornstalks from the water surrounding the grocery store she and her husband run.Their family spent last winter remodeling the place, Joan & Yogi’s. “Day and night,” as her father-in-law, Ted Pohlman, put it. “We’d be up here till 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.”On Saturday, pumps churned to keep the water in the store’s basement from rising higher than a foot-and-a-half deep. Neighbors from around the store on Indiana 63 just north of Prairieton cleared cornstalks and debris from the flooding waters pouring through the community from nearby Honey Creek and streams leading to the Wabash River.“If it hadn’t been for all of the neighbors helping, we’d have been under water,” Ted said, standing in a current of water rushing over the roadway in front of the store.At its entrance, Joan pushed her hair behind her ears and scanned the mud-covered parking lot for more debris. “It’s a small town,” she said. “This isn’t like Wal-Mart or Kmart. Everybody wants to help you.”As she spoke, Larry Sample and his son Jason loaded another dozen people on the haywagon they were pulling with a tractor. “It’s about a ’57, I think. Allis-Chalmers WD-45,” Larry said. “Looks a little rough, but it’ll do the job.”To about 50 stranded people, it looked like a golden chariot. Floodwaters penned them in, flowing over the highway at the Honey Creek bridge to the north and building up around the ravines adjacent to the restructured curve that replaced the old “Dead Man’s Curve” to the south. Some were trying to get out of swamped homes in the Oak Ridge and Prairie Park subdivisions. Others had driven to the store area, then gotten trapped.Larry and Jason started the morning prepared to give horse carriage rides at a wedding in Terre Haute and at the Merom Chatacqua. Those plans changed after more than 6 inches of rainfall hit already rain-soaked Prairieton in southern Vigo County.The Sampleses made their first rescue with their horse buggy, giving a neighbor a ride out just before the berm of the highway washed out in front of his parked pickup truck. Soon, Larry and Jason switched to the tractor and haywagon, ferrying people from the store area to a dry section of Indiana 63. From there, another Prairieton neighbor, Jack Roberts, used his pickup to drive folks through a series of backroads to Stuckey’s at U.S. 41, where their families met them.Larry’s initial mission was “to get some milk and see if anybody needed help.” The milk had to wait.“My concern was, I kept watching the water to see if we were going to lose the road,” Larry said. “But people needed help, so I kept going.”With every load on the haywagon, people shared stories of their predicaments and got reacquainted with familiar faces. Most had waved to each other, or waited in line together at Joan & Yogi’s or shared a table at a Prairieton Volunteer Fire Department fish dinner. Now, they were trying to save their homes.Prairieton Fire Chief Monte Hunt helped coordinate six water rescue units from other communities around the Wabash Valley and Indiana. They’d evacuated residents from nearly 30 Prairieton households by 7 o’clock Saturday, using boats and hovercraft, with at least 20 more homes still waiting to evacuate.While those missions went on, Larry and Jason kept their haywagon runs going. Each time, Larry told Monte, “I’ve got one more to go.”He just kept going.Kyle Pettijohn and Billy Roberts of the Sugar Creek Tactical 41 unit described the rescue of people trying to save some horses. “They got in some swift water, and got pushed up against some trees,” Pettijohn said.The town saw its most tense moments in years, decades or, perhaps, ever. At nightfall, the Prairieton fire and rescue crews, assisted by a team from Fishers, Ind., saved two people who’d foolishly driven into a flood-covered back road and got stuck.Seconds before the rescuers used ropes to walk out and pull them out, one of the crewmen said, “It’s been a long day.” But they kept going.On Prairieton’s south side, resident Tom Moore and his wife drove south of the town to assess the flooding. A woman came out to the road and told him their basement was flooded, and they were walking about 100 yards at a time to bring out belongings. “So I went down and got my boat, and took it to them,” Moore said, “and they were tickled to death.”Like Joan Pohlman said, “It’s a small town.”She peered out at the store, all of the neighbors with water-soaked clothes, the highway and the sun setting over the disarray. In a determined voice, she said, “The whole community has been good to us, and supported us to help keep us going. They’ll come in and have breakfast, or buy gas or milk, because they want us.”Then Larry and Jason loaded up the wagon again and took one more trip toward safety.
TERRE HAUTE — In bare feet, with her pant legs rolled up, Joan Pohlman pulled cornstalks from the water surrounding the grocery store she and her husband run.Their family spent last winter remodeling the place, Joan & Yogi’s. “Day and night,” as her father-in-law, Ted Pohlman, put it. “We’d be up here till 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning.”On Saturday, pumps churned to keep the water in the store’s basement from rising higher than a foot-and-a-half deep. Neighbors from around the store on Indiana 63 just north of Prairieton cleared cornstalks and debris from the flooding waters pouring through the community from nearby Honey Creek and streams leading to the Wabash River.“If it hadn’t been for all of the neighbors helping, we’d have been under water,” Ted said, standing in a current of water rushing over the roadway in front of the store.At its entrance, Joan pushed her hair behind her ears and scanned the mud-covered parking lot for more debris. “It’s a small town,” she said. “This isn’t like Wal-Mart or Kmart. Everybody wants to help you.”As she spoke, Larry Sample and his son Jason loaded another dozen people on the haywagon they were pulling with a tractor. “It’s about a ’57, I think. Allis-Chalmers WD-45,” Larry said. “Looks a little rough, but it’ll do the job.”To about 50 stranded people, it looked like a golden chariot. Floodwaters penned them in, flowing over the highway at the Honey Creek bridge to the north and building up around the ravines adjacent to the restructured curve that replaced the old “Dead Man’s Curve” to the south. Some were trying to get out of swamped homes in the Oak Ridge and Prairie Park subdivisions. Others had driven to the store area, then gotten trapped.Larry and Jason started the morning prepared to give horse carriage rides at a wedding in Terre Haute and at the Merom Chatacqua. Those plans changed after more than 6 inches of rainfall hit already rain-soaked Prairieton in southern Vigo County.The Sampleses made their first rescue with their horse buggy, giving a neighbor a ride out just before the berm of the highway washed out in front of his parked pickup truck. Soon, Larry and Jason switched to the tractor and haywagon, ferrying people from the store area to a dry section of Indiana 63. From there, another Prairieton neighbor, Jack Roberts, used his pickup to drive folks through a series of backroads to Stuckey’s at U.S. 41, where their families met them.Larry’s initial mission was “to get some milk and see if anybody needed help.” The milk had to wait.“My concern was, I kept watching the water to see if we were going to lose the road,” Larry said. “But people needed help, so I kept going.”With every load on the haywagon, people shared stories of their predicaments and got reacquainted with familiar faces. Most had waved to each other, or waited in line together at Joan & Yogi’s or shared a table at a Prairieton Volunteer Fire Department fish dinner. Now, they were trying to save their homes.Prairieton Fire Chief Monte Hunt helped coordinate six water rescue units from other communities around the Wabash Valley and Indiana. They’d evacuated residents from nearly 30 Prairieton households by 7 o’clock Saturday, using boats and hovercraft, with at least 20 more homes still waiting to evacuate.While those missions went on, Larry and Jason kept their haywagon runs going. Each time, Larry told Monte, “I’ve got one more to go.”He just kept going.Kyle Pettijohn and Billy Roberts of the Sugar Creek Tactical 41 unit described the rescue of people trying to save some horses. “They got in some swift water, and got pushed up against some trees,” Pettijohn said.The town saw its most tense moments in years, decades or, perhaps, ever. At nightfall, the Prairieton fire and rescue crews, assisted by a team from Fishers, Ind., saved two people who’d foolishly driven into a flood-covered back road and got stuck.Seconds before the rescuers used ropes to walk out and pull them out, one of the crewmen said, “It’s been a long day.” But they kept going.On Prairieton’s south side, resident Tom Moore and his wife drove south of the town to assess the flooding. A woman came out to the road and told him their basement was flooded, and they were walking about 100 yards at a time to bring out belongings. “So I went down and got my boat, and took it to them,” Moore said, “and they were tickled to death.”Like Joan Pohlman said, “It’s a small town.”She peered out at the store, all of the neighbors with water-soaked clothes, the highway and the sun setting over the disarray. In a determined voice, she said, “The whole community has been good to us, and supported us to help keep us going. They’ll come in and have breakfast, or buy gas or milk, because they want us.”Then Larry and Jason loaded up the wagon again and took one more trip toward safety.
Like many on south side, Oakridge Park residents sifting through possessions
By Arthur Foulkes/The Tribune-Star
TERRE HAUTE — Onalee Myles moved to Oakridge Park subdivision south of Terre Haute around two years ago because she was tired of paying flood insurance at her former residence in Willa Villa, she said.Then came widespread flash-flooding this past weekend and much of her new neighborhood found itself underwater.“We lost everything” in our basement, Myles said, while she watched rain soak the clothing she had been trying to dry on her front lawn. The basement had contained family heirlooms and photographs, she said. It was all ruined, she said.On Monday, floodwaters remained in large ponds throughout Oakridge Park, leaving many roads impassable. Residents stood in small groups around the neighborhood, surrounded by piles of ruined belongings. Oakridge Park is on Indiana 63, south of Ryman Drive in southern Vigo County,The ground around the Myles home is saturated, Bernie Myles said. No floodwater reached the outside of their home; rather, it seemed to seep into the basement through the walls and floor, he said.“The water came so fast and furious the sump pump couldn’t handle it,” Onalee said.Through all the flooding and rain, the Myles home never lost power, Onalee said, adding that she knows many other homes suffered much worse flood damage. In some parts of Oakridge Park, the floodwaters reached the top of real estate “for sale” signs in the yards, she said.“I’ve sold houses with indoor pools,” she said with a laugh. “But I didn’t think I’d own one.”
TERRE HAUTE — Onalee Myles moved to Oakridge Park subdivision south of Terre Haute around two years ago because she was tired of paying flood insurance at her former residence in Willa Villa, she said.Then came widespread flash-flooding this past weekend and much of her new neighborhood found itself underwater.“We lost everything” in our basement, Myles said, while she watched rain soak the clothing she had been trying to dry on her front lawn. The basement had contained family heirlooms and photographs, she said. It was all ruined, she said.On Monday, floodwaters remained in large ponds throughout Oakridge Park, leaving many roads impassable. Residents stood in small groups around the neighborhood, surrounded by piles of ruined belongings. Oakridge Park is on Indiana 63, south of Ryman Drive in southern Vigo County,The ground around the Myles home is saturated, Bernie Myles said. No floodwater reached the outside of their home; rather, it seemed to seep into the basement through the walls and floor, he said.“The water came so fast and furious the sump pump couldn’t handle it,” Onalee said.Through all the flooding and rain, the Myles home never lost power, Onalee said, adding that she knows many other homes suffered much worse flood damage. In some parts of Oakridge Park, the floodwaters reached the top of real estate “for sale” signs in the yards, she said.“I’ve sold houses with indoor pools,” she said with a laugh. “But I didn’t think I’d own one.”
