After the flood comes the mud
As cleanup and damage assessments on Butler's West End began in earnest Thursday morning, residents began to share stories of how they weathered a vicious thunderstorm and flash flood that inundated homes and businesses with water and mud Wednesday night.
Some residents of the neighborhood that includes West Brady Street said they couldn't even return home late Wednesday as flood water raged, moving cars and swamping homes near Sullivan Run.
Leah and Aaron Kobert, of 515 W. Brady, were driving home from a relative's house when they found a wall of water — or a lake; it depends on whom you ask — waiting for them.
The Koberts couldn't drive through the water, so they pulled into the parking lot of nearby Family Video to decide their next step. Ultimately Leah — worried about her car and whether their home was in danger — decided to make for their house on foot.
What started out as a walk through waist-high water however, quickly became a dangerous swim through debris-choked floodwater.
“I was swimming through it. Swimming,” she said. “The water's just coming and coming — the next thing you know, cars (are) getting washed away. I never seen nothing like it in my life.”
Down the street from the Koberts, Amanda Coester's house at 526 W. Brady was inundated with water that nearly made its way from the basement into the kitchen. Outside, Coester's friends, Antoine Pollard and Dylan Folk, were rushing to help rescue the occupants of an SUV that had become trapped at the intersection of West Brady Street and Mitchell Avenue. With the water rising as high as the vehicle's hood, Kobert — still swimming for her own home — watched as the men pulled three people, one of whom Coester said was a 3-month-old child, to safety. They sheltered in her house for a time, as the flood raged outside.
Taking stock of the damage on Thursday, Coester said her own car was ruined by the flood, but she was thankful no one was hurt.
“Everyone was safe, and that's all that matters,” she said.
Still, Coester marveled at the speed and power with which the flood turned her street into a river.
“I grew up in Florida, so I've been through hurricanes, and I've never seen flooding like this,” Coester said.
Another person involved in the rescue at Mitchell Avenue was Matt Williams of 544 W. Brady, whose house took on about nine feet of water Wednesday night. The pressure from the rising water was so great that it either forced open basement windows or broke them out entirely, sweeping toys, food and other items out into the street and yard. Williams said he expects to have to find alternative lodging for his wife, Brandy, and their 6-year-old son, Bentley, for at least a couple weeks as cleanup work takes place.
“It's stuff you see on natural disaster (shows) on TV,” Williams said. “It (the street) was just like one big lake.”
Across the street at 517 W. Brady Cheryl Eldridge's backyard was turning into a mud pit — though she wouldn't realize it until Thursday morning, when family members began arriving to commiserate over the damage and help begin cleanup work.
Eldridge's backyard is normally a playground for her grandchild. On Thursday its rock fountain was draped in mud and a white-and-green painted shed showed a water line about three feet high. Children's toys were piled high on a picnic table while the ground was covered in several inches of viscous mud. She wondered aloud how the mess would get cleaned up.“What do you do with all that mud?” Eldridge asked. “Where does it go?”Inside the home, Eldridge said, four feet of water had poured into her basement, flipping over a tool bench and table saw that had been bolted down.One street over, at 519 State St., Alisha Skal and her family were sitting on the porch, wondering much the same thing. Would they have to pay extra to haul away all the garbage created by the flood? What was the city going to do to prevent such a disaster from happening again?Skal said she'd been told by Mayor Tom Donaldson that extra garbage services were not being made free-of-charge, and said rumors were circulating that the city had failed to adequately prepare for seasonal rainfall.“We've been here six years. Never flooded (before).” Skal said.Back on West Brady Street, as workers used heavy equipment to remove a substantial blockage of tree debris, garbage, lawn chairs and other items from beneath the bridge over Sullivan Run, engineer Joe Gray said the blockage represented the most significant immediate concern for the neighborhood. With more rain in the forecast, Gray said the blockage needed to be removed quickly.“If we get another storm, it's basically going to flood,” Gray said.It took hours for the blockage to be removed, but city officials confirmed Thursday afternoon that the waterway had been cleared. Still uncertain, however, was how long cleanup efforts would ultimately take.Donaldson, who declared a state of emergency for the area and imposed a curfew forbidding non-residents from being in the area after dark, said the city was working to provide trash collection boxes to residents by today, but it was not immediately clear where they would be located or how quickly they would be filled by the mud and garbage created by the flood.“This magnitude of flood; I can't remember the last time it happened,” Gray said. “It's going to be months for a cleanup.”
