Sioux City Community helps Rail Road Museum with clean up

SIOUX CITY, Iowa (KCAU) — On June 23rd, the Sioux City Railroad Museum was flooded with between 4 to 5 feet of water. However, that didn’t stop officials from saving what they could.

“I can’t begin to express the emotions that the Obermeyer family has felt, but I have seen them and that it hurts the heart,” said Logan Stilwill, a Sioux City Railroad Museum volunteer.

That Monday, museum officials and several volunteers took the plunge to have a look at the museum.

“A couple of us waited inside here to really see what it was like and to get pictures and damage assessments,” said TJ Obermeyer, with the Sioux City Railroad Museum.

“TJ was up to his chest in water. I was up to my waist. We walked through the car shop. We went through the Roundhouse. T.J. looked into the machine shop. It was for me It was a step back to see what the damage was because it’s hard to recover from flooding,” said Stilwill.

The day before the flood, volunteers prepared by placing sandbags, and even moving Holocaust Museum pieces to higher grounds.

“Some of the personal items and the things that are irreplaceable were taken out or there were measures taken to ensure that those weren’t destroyed. The exhibit in general was pretty well severely impacted, so a large portion of that will have to be either redone or reconstructed in some way,” said Obermeyer.

After the water receded, officials and volunteers immediately got to work draining water from buildings and picking up debris. Obermeyer says the museums got a long way to go before opening again.

“Making sure that the grounds are able to be traversed by people and make sure that they’re safe. That’s priority one when they’re out here. So they won’t have to go through any damaged or construction zones. But two, I think, is making sure that a lot of our cornerstone exhibits and buildings will be opened,” said Obermeyer.

Obermeyer says he’s seen more people coming out to help out both before the water came in, and after it had receded. It left him speechless.

“I think throughout the day I saw probably 50, 60 volunteers walk through the gates, even just people driving in would come in and they pitch in to help. And that’s an important thing to have that support,” said Stilwill.

“It’s hard to put into words how much support we’ve gotten and what it means. It’s hard to describe and we can’t thank the people of our volunteers here and the community enough for what they’ve done so far for us,” said Obermeyer.

Obermeyer says he hopes to have the railroad museum back up and running by Labor Day.

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