Residents spend 4th of July holiday cleaning up flood damage

JASPER, Ind. (WEHT)- The 4 ^th of July holiday normally means cook-outs, pool parties, and spending time with loved ones.

For many in Jasper, it looks completely different.

Doppler radar estimates from Thursday show parts of Dubois County had over eight inches of rain.

The Dubois County Emergency Management Agency says rain fell through the county, but Ireland and Jasper had the most damage.

EMA Director, Tammy Humbert says, “Numerous businesses had water impacted into their business. One of the worst things that we were informed of last night was one of our apartment buildings had about six apartments that had a lot of water run into their apartment.”

Knoll Ridge Apartments had 7 people displaced due to the flood damage.

The floodwaters at the apartments were up to 4 feet deep.

The flash food warning ended at 8:30pm, but crews had boots on the ground before it expired.

General Manager and Co-Owner of Servpro, Dustin Chaney says, “They had just gotten back to the office from being out all day and then you get alerts that the storms are coming. So they turn around, grab equipment, and head right back out.”

Servpro teams spent much of the day in Jasper helping people clean up and dry out.

However, the process can take several days.

Chaney says, “Right now is the emergency services phase still, extracting all the water out and then you set up dehumidification and air movement to try to get things start drying, and then you get a plan for it you have to tear anything out, or anything to make sure that nothing bad grows and that you can actually get things back to like they were before it happened.”

EMA Director, Tammy Humbert says this amount of damage from a flash flood is a first for her.

She agrees it will take some time to get businesses ad residents back to normal.

Humbert says, “We have a lot of flooding that happens periodically, but this was flash flooding that we haven’t seen in my career. We had areas that were hit that have never been impacted in the past.”

The 7 residents are currently staying in a hotel that the Knoll Ridge Apartments paid for.

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