Humboldt area flood cleanup and park washed away

HUMBOLDT, Iowa — Early morning on June 27th, the West Fort of the Des Moines river, the flood waters hit their peak and began going down.

Now, over a week later, the cleanup is underway for a small group of homes along the river.

Jerry and Melanie Hewitt, of Clive, have been coming to this riverside cabin for years. Jerry’s grandparents bought the property in the 1960’s.

“He grew up here going fishing with his grandfather, and catching frogs,” said Melanie. “We helped his parents cleanup after the flood of 1993, and had to do some major tearing-out and rebuilding the outbuildings and the grounds, but the cabin was un-touched, the water did not get into the cabin in ’93.

Now Jerry is laying plans to repair the flood damage, water went as high as the electrical outlets in the cabin.

“The water came in we think between 15 and 16 inches so water got into the outlets,” said Jerry “They are telling me that the chemicals can corrode the wiring and this wiring may be that old cloth type of wiring so we don’t want to take the risk of powering this up because this could be a hotspot.”

Jerry said they would need to wait for around six months before beginning the re-hab as to let everything dry out.

Just upstream at Rose Mill Park in Rutland, the lower half of the park remains closed. The floodwaters on June 26 & 27 went around the dam joining with a flooding creek to the west to create a river right though the river front area. A new asphalt road was washed away down to the bedrock under the road.

“In 1993 we had enough water to come up and around this tree here and this year when the water came up and came rushing down the river there’s this large debris pile behind the dam,” said  Susan Tille, the Mayor of Rutland. “I think the water split around some of it went down the falls. Some of it came back around to our spillway, and then the creek rose, and the two came together and just flooded the park.”

Tille said she hopes she can get a representative of FEMA out to take a look at the park.

The Rutland Big Dam Celebration will go on, but far away from the river due to the damage. People can catch the activities in downtown Rutland on Saturday July 6th.

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