Madison residents continue to clean up a week after a storm dropped six inches of rain that caused flash flooding, and some want to ensure it never happens again.
They plan to ask city leaders to consider building a water retention area north of the city to keep heavy rains from flooding Memorial Creek, KELO-TV reported. Heather Roling said she also plans to advocate the creation of a telephone notification system to alert residents of impending bad weather.
Roling said she lost many personal items when her basement filled with four feet of water during the overnight storm May 5-6.
“All my baby pictures are gone. The stuff can be replaced, the memories can’t and it is heartbreaking for all of us,” she said. “It’s not just me. It’s the entire community going through this.”
Kelli Stout is due to give birth any day, and she and her family have been forced to live with relatives because their own home is unlivable after a basement wall collapsed.
Tim Higgins was cleaning out two inches of slimy mud from his garage with his wife, Tammy, over the weekend.
“The biggest problem we had is our basement filled with 2 1/2 feet of water with sanitary sewer backup,” he said. “We would pump it down and it would fill right back up.”
The storm damaged about 100 homes and businesses in the eastern South Dakota city of about 6,500 people. It also led to one death, when an Alabama man visiting family drowned in the creek.
Topics Flood
Was this article valuable?
Here are more articles you may enjoy.
Homebuilders Cut on ‘Sluggish’ Housing Market, Florida Woes 
AT&T Says Data From Around 109M Customer Accounts Illegally Downloaded 
Wall Street Pushes Back After Activists Escalate Protests 
Deere Retreats From Diversity Measures After Online Attacks 
