Communities are starting the long process of recovery following a week of devastating floods. That includes Craig, Missouri in Holt County north of Kansas City along the Missouri River.
Before the water arrived, the community set out to save the town of Craig.
“Farmers at their own expense brought escalators in dug and put a levy up around the town,” says Holt County Emergency Manager Tom Bullock in an interview with Missouri Farm Bureau. “That’s where they have a school and that’s where the rural water plant is for this whole area.”
Townspeople and nearby communities showed up to sandbag, haul, and stack hoping to hold the waters back. However, as the waters rose, the levy couldn’t hold. City streets were only passable by boat as the river became an ocean.
“So we thought we were okay this time because it always goes out somewhere else,” says resident and flood victim Ronda Mauseth. “It didn’t this time.”
Mauseth’s place is now a sopping wet mess of debris and memories
“It just totaled everything,” says Mauseth. “Everything’s mud and it’s just ruined.”
Those losses include the irreplaceable.
“I lost my dad’s bible,” says Mauseth holding back tears. “You just can’t replace that stuff.”
Farmers in the area are hoping their spring isn’t over.
“I still think that there’s a hopefully an opportunity to plant something this year,” says Holt County Farmer Trey Garst during an interview with Missouri Farm Bureau. “There were still areas from 2011 that we were still working on that got covered up with sand or ditches that weren’t quite dug out yet.”
Showing that recoveries like this always take time, but many farmers like Garst have done it in the past.
“The first thing to do is just try to get out and get the trash out your fields,” says Garst. “You go clean that up and then try to break the ground up to get it to dry out because it’s usually pretty swampy out there.”
While some are already thinking about the next steps for others the next step is moving to a life beyond the levees.
“We’re going to leave,” says Mauseth. “We can’t - I can’t live here and I can’t do this again next year.”
Weather officials say the threat of flooding is expected to last through May across much of the Midwest.
