Sharing the flood misery of '08

By Lori Berglund — Daily Freeman-Journal Editor
My heart ached for people as we drove around surveying flood damage Sunday. It truly ached.

I knew it was bad when I heard my husband curse as soon as he looked out the window that morning. All night long, in wave after wave, I had woken to the sound of pounding, really pounding rain. And this is a person who, though once terrified by storms, now sleeps through just about anything.

I slept in another hour, while someone sort-of patiently waited, and then we took off in the truck to take a look around the neighborhood. I’m new to this place over the rivers and through the woods, but my husband has lived around here all his life, and he was seeing ponds — big ponds — where he had never seen a pond before.

A few of the photos I took that morning can be seen with this article.. We went down to the Des Moines River south of Lehigh, but I wouldn’t let him drive through water across the road to see what it was like in town. When we turned around, I took the photo of the combine surrounded by water, also attached.

We backtracked and headed to the Des Moines River north of Stratford. There’s a gravel road on the Hamilton County side of the bridge that leads up to the last bridge over the Boone River before the confluence of the two rivers. Corn fields had turned to lakes, so at least the geese were enjoying the day. On the other side of the river we had actually seen white pelicans rest on a farm pond.

The road soon led to a total washout. The water here was no longer running across the road, but it had carved a foot-deep canyon, several feet wide, all the way across the road. When he said he wanted to drive across it, I jumped back in the truck and said I wouldn’t stop him.

We got through fine. It’s amazing where you can go with a hillbilly at the wheel of a 4-wheel drive. (By the way, he really doesn’t mind being called a hillbilly; I think he’s sort of proud of it.)

Up on that last Boone River Bridge we could see the high water lap against the bottom of the bridge. Looking upstream, we watched a huge pile of debris coming around the bend in the river. Already, there was a large pile of brush, tree limbs, pop bottles, even tires and who knows what dammed up, under the bridge. We watched that debris pile float down the river the way Hammy’s riverboat used to float down the Tales of the Riverbank opening scene, as Baby Boomers who grew up watching Betty Lou may recall. We waited to see which way the pile would go and, sure enough, the current took it right to that big dam of trash below us. We heard the thump as it hit.

Returning home, I packed up my camera and headed for work. Seeing pond after pond all the way up to Webster City, I couldn’t help but think about the millions of dollars that was under water. I have heard this year’s planting season described as “the most expensive crop ever put in the ground,” and here it was getting flooded away.

In Webster City itself, it wasn’t just livelihoods being washed away, but a life’s worth of living for so many with homes near the flooded river and creeks.

But, as always in times such as these, people were showing their best. They were there, helping friends,family and, in some cases, people they didn’t even know.

Growing up, I can remember Dad talking about weather years he could never forget, especially the winter of ‘36. Later Sunday, as my brothers and I emptied out Mom’s flooded basement, I remembered the June night in 1974 when the seven of us spent at least 45 minutes in that basement as hail wiped out crops and took a heavy toll on the house. As we worked, we talked about the ice storm when we gave up and went to a hotel. And we compared the water standing this year to the flood of ‘93. And finally, I have to recall that for nearly a year the forecast for this summer has been for a drought. But, don’t worry, there’s still time for that, too.

Now, I’m afraid, 2008 will be the year I remember as the year it stopped snowing only so that it could start raining.

But we’ll get through this, we will. And we will count our blessings. We will pray for those much harder hit than ourselves. And we will wait for the sun to shine again.