Gallatin residents begin flood clean up, FEMA touring county
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[One would think the last thing people of Gallatin County would be hoping for was more rain.
The floodwater has gone down and has left many homes a wreck, left cornstalks and logs in muddy yards devoid of grass and left a skim of smelly river mud everywhere.
Residents say the smell has diminished since late last week. It may be drying out or people may simply be accustomed to it. Some hope for a good rain to wash their towns clean.
Equality
John Wren was working at the Equality Full Gospel Church to remove ruined items inside for burning. A dark line about 4 feet high shows how high the water came inside the building. Ceiling tiles hung down and many had fallen. The ceiling fan blades hung limp.
"Personally, it's gutted me," Wren said of the effort to fight the flood.
"In 1997 it was just up to the corner of the church, so we weren't thinking it would be as bad."
Wren, volunteers and firefighters assisted in sandbagging the church, the home of Duke Williams and others and the effort was for nothing.
"It was a total waste of manpower. We just bought a day bagging. But you don't know that going in. Only the Lord above knows that. Things happen for a reason," Wren said.
Up the street Jim Prather and his wife Dorothy were inspecting their house. A man was working on Prather's furnace so he could turn it on to dry the interior. Water breached the sandbag wall and reached up to the doors of his trailer.
"No water was in the house, as such, but it leached up into the floor, into the carpet and all that," Prather said.
The Prathers moved out and there is work to be done before they can move back in.
"It needs fumigated to get the germs or whatever killed," Prather said.
Prather was eight years old when his parents lived in the house in the 1937 flood.
"In 1937 it got up to the eaves on this house. I remember it. I was eight years old and Dad and me came down and repainted, put in new window frames and rugs. But I never figured it would happen again," Prather said.
Somewhere at the eaves, buried under the vinyl siding is a nail that marked the flood's crest on the house.
"Dad's brother came out in a john boat and drove a nail in it right when it crested. We've put siding over it since then," Prather said.
Prather lives on the west side of town and remembers a goulish sight that was on the road when the 1937 floodwaters began receding.
"There was a catfish that long, he was dead, and he'd tried to swallow another catfish the same size," Prather said.
While the Prathers have chores ahead before they move back home they are grateful for the limited damage when so many others have lost virtually everything.
"We're blessed and we're thankful," Prather said.
Among those who have lost nearly everything were June Hall and boyfriend Rob Basham who live in a trailer on Depot Street.
Hall owns two trailers on the street, both had walls of sandbags around them and both became swamped with 4 feet of floodwater inside the structures.
"We got our clothes out," Basham said.
The future for the couple's residency is uncertain. Basham believes the trailers are not salvageable.
"We were stacking everything up, but it got too deep and took it. All we got was our clothes," Basham said.
Basham and Hall's brother, Dustin Sullivan, were moving sandbags out of the way so they could reach the front door. There were no steps into the trailer.
"Our porch is down there at the end of the street," Basham said.
Missing porches to the front of trailers is a common site to those returning home to inspect damage. The steps and porch floated up and currents took them to unlikely landing spots.
"That trailer down there at the end, it's porch is about two miles out of town," Basham said.
The porch floated up Forest Road as though heading to a new home at Glen O. Jones Lake, Basham said.
Basham said a trailer and pole barn up Forest Road and across the Saline River bridge had collapsed flat during the flood.
"The waves off the water took care of it," he said.
Junction
The water allowed residents of Junction to return to town last week. After all three roads into town were covered with water, Mayor Melinda Robbins decided it was time to order an evacuation and to shut off power to the town.
The streets are covered with muddy residue. Cornstalks and logs have been pushed to the side.
At a side yard of a house on Main Street where Shawn Bradley and his family were working to pump out the basement of Bradley's grandmother was a dead black and yellow snake.
"The skeeters and snakes, my Lord," Bradley said.
He said one of his neighbors sat on the couch upon coming home when a snake darted out of the cushions.
The smell of a river's bottom hung in the air.
"This is good compared to the first day we came back in," Bradley said of the odor.
Bradley's project was the pumping of his grandmothers basement and salvaging what he could from his own house where he has lived 35 of his 36 years.
"It was 3 and a half feet. Pretty much everybody I know is saying they got 1 feet to 3 feet. It's bad," Bradley said.
The house across the street from him had two vehicles parked in the yard. Both had been completely submerged and were covered in mud.
Bradley was shocked when he first walked into his house.
"It looked like a dang tornado hit. The refrigerator was down, a freezer was down, the tables and chairs split apart. But the smell is what's bad," he said.
Moisture breeds fungus.
"To me it looked like mold. The insurance man said it's mildew," he said.
Bradley's floors are buckled from the moisture. He stacked mattresses up on the furniture in preparation, but did not stack them high enough.
One of the first tasks returning home was cleaning up the rotten food that had spilled from the overturned refrigerator.
"Right now we're waiting on the insurance man to see if they'll give us anything. FEMA is supposed to be around," Bradley said.
Bradley -- now in his fourth week off work for family leave -- is staying at the home of his brother, Gallatin County Sheriff Shannon Bradley, in Shawneetown.
"Some farmer's field must be clean," Bradley said, remarking on the cornstalks and logs at the edge of the street.
"They're all here."
Junction First Baptist Church's Family Life Center took in about 6 feet of water.
"In 2001 we built this," longtime church member Doris Morton said.
The building that is used for wedding receptions and family reunions now has a concrete floor covered with a slick skim of mud and tables and stairs covered with cornstalks. The kitchen is a mud-filled wreckage.
Morton, the church pastor Roy Dale Orr and his wife, Rita, had just received lunch of meatball sandwiches courtesy of the Salvation Army van that roved the streets. They had also just spoken to representatives of the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief organization wearing yellow coats and hats who were inspecting damage in preparation for the deployment of a relief crew.
The three toured the church showing the buckled floor in the preschool room, the mildewed chairs in storage and the residue on the sanctuary's pews showing a high water mark of 13 inches. Though the water only touched 13 inches on the wooden legs of the pews, the upholstered seats were somehow soaked.
The three were hoping to salvage the songbooks from the sanctuary.
The basement is flooded.
"We can't pump the water out of the basement until the water level is down in town. Otherwise it will come right back in," Orr said.
According to a church history Rita Orr provided the church was raised and the basement built following the 1937 flood.
That flood caused new floors to be laid, the pews to be cleaned and revarnished.
From Dec. 14, 1947, to Jan. 25, 1948, members of the church donated their time in raising the church and digging the basement. The work was completed Dec. 11, 1949.
Now that basement is flooded and until it can be pumped it is unknown the condition of the church's structure.
"We don't know if there is structural damage," Orr said.
He noted he has walked throughout the church in the past days and has not yet fallen through any floors.
For now the church is holding Sunday service 10:30 a.m. in the upstairs of the American Legion in Shawneetown.
The flood of 2011 will undoubtedly make the next church history book. The church will need much work before it is back in business.
"FEMA's in town today so we don't know what they'll say," Orr said.
FEMA
Most of the flood victims are without flood insurance and most don't know what to expect in the future.
There is talk of a group of Mennonites who are planning to offer construction work and Southern Baptist Disaster Relief representatives were talking to people in Junction. Homeowners were hopeful even if they did not carry flood insurance that their insurance companies might be able to offer some sort of relief.
Several homeowners were also hopeful the Federal Emergency Management Agency could help.
FEMA Public Information Officer Sam Ventura called the newspaper from Junction Monday afternoon with a hope his agency would neither cause homeowners anxiety or get hopes too high.
"We're here to work and we're working very closely with (Gallatin County Emergency Management Agency Coordinator) Steve Galt who is giving us places to go to assess the damage that has been done," Ventura said.
Ventura said people with flood damage should not be worried if FEMA representatives do not speak to them. FEMA will be working through the week in the county and longer if need be to assess the worst of the damage and cannot stop at every home where there is damage, Ventura said.
The agency is compiling the damage information to send to the Illinois Governor's office.
"It will all be put together with the state and FEMA, whatever we find, and the figures presented to the governor's office. He will decide if the state has the resources to take care of everything or not. If not he will request a federal disaster declaration by the president," Ventura said.
"I don't want to get expectations up. If there is a declaration, people who qualify will be helped, of course. Not just one area of the county, but the whole county.
"Anyone with damage is eligible to apply."
Gallatin County EMA asks those with damage to report it to the Gallatin County Clerk's office at 269-3025.
Teams of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and FEMA will be in the region the week of May 23 to meet with local government officials to gather information on their flood-related expenses including those for safety measures, overtime and repair or replacement of public facilities and infrastructure. That information will be used to support a request for federal assistance to help governments receive reimbursement for costs.
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DeNeal receives e-mail at bdeneal@yourclearwave.com.</li>
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