Dam!

If you didn't hear about the dams breaking Midland, MI. last week, here's a clip from the news.

Michigan has seen heavy rainfall in May, with areas around Midland logging 3 to 4 inches at the beginning of the week of May 17. The Tittabawassee River in Midland and the Rifle River near Sterling reached flood stage, and on May 20, following immense levels of rain, the Edenford dam was breached, worsening the flood situation in the Midland area. The Sanford dam was also compromised, but did not break.

Communities in Midland, Edenville, and Sanford have been badly hit by the flooding. 10,000 people along the Tittabawassee River in Midland County began evacuating on the night of May 19. 500 people have been displaced and are in shelters. The floods have caused heavy damage to property. Hundreds, if not thousands, of homes have been destroyed. Homes and businesses around downtown Midland are submerged in water.

It was interesting timing. Also, if you watch the news, our governor is running a pretty tight ship around here. She had just extended our stay-at-home order to June 12 from May 28, though we can gather in groups of 10, while social distancing, outside.

On Thursday or Friday last week we got emails and messages on Facebook from our Bishop and Stake President with information from Elder Devries, our Area 70 here, stating that they needed healthy, able bodies, 16 and over to help out with the cleaning up process for the people affected there. They emphasized that it needed to be done quickly before the heat and humidity started to kick in, which it was, and mold and bacteria got out of control.

They even encouraged us to go on Sunday because this service was greater than our worship services and "the ox was in the mire". 

I was privileged to speak at a Zoom baptism on Saturday for a convert who was going to be in our ward, but ended up moving to a different ward. Jason had already started the process of some maintenance on our camper (the heavy rains made it difficult to do anything earlier in the week). He knew he was going to have to finish the camper project on Monday so we could get it off our driveway, so we decided that Sunday was the day to make the two-hour drive to Midland to help out, especially when the Bishop told Jason he would postpone his talk he was supposed to give that Sunday.

We signed up for the 12-5 slot. We held our family sacrament meeting and Come Follow Me earlier than normal, gave the kids some threats and instructions, left the overall charge of everyone on Victoria and the cooking to Karissa. Victoria really wanted to come, and being almost 16, I considered it, but I'm glad she could stay and help at home, though Karissa could have held her own and she made some fantastic chili and blonde brownies for dessert!

When we arrived at the Stake Center in Midland, we could only have one of us check-in (social distancing, remember) and then we were assigned to a group of 10. We had to use the port-a-potties outside, but they did provide snacks, masks, gloves, water, and some equipment. A huge truck had been sent from Salt Lake with the yellow helping hands shirts, generators, and cleaning buckets. It was amazing how quickly everything had come together for this major event! The Church is awesome!

The house we went to was for a single, older man. His house was going to be safe, even with the 30 feet of water from the river nearby, until the dam broke! After that, he had to grab his dogs and put them in buckets so he could wade through the water to evacuate. The water went up to the bottom of the roof of his barn and garage. We had to take out some layers of the kitchen floor. I don't even know what it all was. We took out drywall and plaster. We helped cut up and stack wood from a tree in the yard, and mostly we cleaned hundreds of tools that were submerged in water and mud and had been in his garage. 

It was definitely more hot and humid that day and I was wearing rain boots, gloves, and a face mask lifting very heavy bags of plaster and carrying it through mud. I have never sweated more on my upper lip in my life! The man was very grateful, though, and overwhelmed at the tasks at hand.

About 800 people from the church were there on Saturday and 900 on Sunday, to help out. I'm sure there was more on Monday from the reports of friends around here on Facebook. 

Our house was still standing when got home after being gone 9 1/2 hours. We were happy to eat some homemade chili! Our kids served in their own way by being independent at home. 

As we drove by houses, there were piles of furniture that had been ruined and out for the trash.

You can see some water in the grass, that's the way it was in most of the grassy areas, making for a lot of mud.

Bits of crumbled plaster and some of the bags I carried out

Christmas decor. It was already out to the curb, I don't know why it wasn't in a bag...

The man's barn where the water was up to the bottom of the roof.

Everything was covered in a brown muck color from all the sediment. 

His garage with all of his ruined motorcycles. The water went up to the clock in the back. You can see where it stopped by where the color is lighter.

One of his toolboxes, after we had emptied some drawers.

These weren't as muddy, but were in water, as you can see.

A big puddle at the church. I didn't end up wearing a yellow shirt because I didn't realize how many they had (I wasn't the one who checked in) and I didn't think I would get as dirty as I did on my shirt!

Jason didn't have another pair os shoes, so he had to walk around in the puddle to clean off his feet when we were done.