30-11-120

What do these numbers have in common? Late Thursday night, we got rain. LOTS of rain. In the 30 hours following, my area received approximately 11" of rain. We are now in a state of disaster.

There is a river and a creek that run through the county and city -- The river is at 16ft right now, two feet above flood stage.

The rain wreaked havoc in my city as well as the county. All roads leaving the city except one were closed due to flooding. I saw water shooting up through a manhole cover. I live on higher ground so was one of the lucky ones! Some who live one block to the west of me had 3 feet of water in their basement. In a community SW of me, people have been dealing with entire basements full of water for over 4 days. That community has been closed to traffic.

I woke up Saturday morning to water in my basement. There was at least an inch of water across 3/4 of the basement. Luckily, I keep all the important stuff up on plastic pallets so I didn't lose much.

I started to shop vac the water and after sucking up 30 gallons of water, I found out that water was seeping up through a crack in the floor. In the three years at The Homestead, I've never seen that happen. I could hold the shop vac over the crack and hear the water being sucked up. That was the end of cleaning up the basement water... at least until it stopped bubbling up through the crack!

Six hours later, I was able to clean up the basement. ONE HUNDRED TWENTY gallons later most of the water is off the basement floor.


What Did The City Look Like Early Saturday Morning?

Baileyville Road
IL Rte 20 W
Lamm Road
Walnut Road: Crews were working to remove a utility pole that had fallen onto the roadway due to rushing water. See how close the water is to the top of the bridge? By later in the afternoon, the water had risen up over the bridge and the road had to be closed.

Sonic: At the time the photo was taken, the water
was about thigh deep. May I take your order?

West Ave Shopping: Later in the afternoon, there was at least 6" of water rushing across the roadway.

NOTE: Please excuse the poor quality of the photos. They were taken with my cell phone. I did have my camera with me and took hundreds of photos over a two hour time span, but when I went to upload them I got a card error. Grrr! (I am very upset) I don't know if they're recoverable, but I have a call into a computer place. My other photos really show how much devastation there was/is!