A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper
On June 22, our lives changed. I’ve shared this story with many of you, but I haven’t been able to process or piece it together in writing. I gave myself a goal of the one-month marker, so here I am.
Prior to the flood, whenever I saw people on the news on roofs being evacuated, I could not even fathom how they got themselves in that predicament.
Until it was us.
I somehow managed to leave our place of comfort and joy — with food, water and warm beds — and get my family of seven, with my five babies, stuck on the roof of a school.
Anchor and Alma had a swim meet in Estherville. Another swim mom, who was in town, messaged me and said we might have to take a different route. A friend reached out about her home flooding. I contacted the Governor’s office, other state officials and Congressman Feenstra and let them know we would need some help. Reynolds and Feenstra kept in touch with me that day. They wanted eyes on the ground and the first hand experience. They engaged from the start.
We were ready for the swim meet and loading the Yukon when the swim meet was canceled.
My mom had been texting about how she had some water in the basement, so, since we were already loaded in the car, we went to help. I thought the kids could run around and play outside while we sopped up some water.
My dad went to work in Spirit Lake. I loaded two cases of paper towels and I tried to load our floor squeegee. Will (Megan’s husband) stopped me and asked, “What the f-ck are you going to do with a squeegee?” which ended up being a phrase we laughed about many times later.
Getting to Spencer, there was some water on the streets, but we managed to pick up my mom, go buy another sump pump and head back to her house. I stayed with the kids outside and in the car.
Will and my mom went inside. The water was creeping up so fast. The people across the street had a fishing boat and were boating around their (usually) small pond, street and front yard.
I went inside, told them they needed to hurry and my mom needed to pack a bag. She pushed back. She’s going to stay. So I took her dogs outside, got them in the freshly detailed (so my mom knew I was serious) Yukon and used my best police officer-type voice.
I told her, with a few expletives, we need to go. My dad was watching this all on the security camera. I had five babies and her two dogs, so now she had to go.
Her neighbor, Bryan Christoffer, kayaked across the street, and in his very calm voice — he told my mom she needed to go. He made it clear she didn’t have an option. That it was time. She grabbed her medication (my mom had breast cancer and relies on multiple medications for long standing neuropathy as a result). We got in the car and tried to get out.
Every exit from the neighborhood was covered in FEET of water. It went up FEET in minutes. Every road we tried to get out of the neighborhood was suddenly under feet of water. Even being in a big vehicle, we couldn’t get out. Cars were starting to float. And by the time we figured this all out, there was no getting back to my parent’s house either.
People started to come out of their homes. Like zombies, we all started to congregate around a church and Lincoln school. The church had a drain backing up in the front parking lot, so Lincoln seemed like the best choice. We thought we’d take the kids to the playground — but it was all in puddles of water. The kids kept calling it a waterpark. Little did we know, the playground was going to be picnic table high before we even made it out of the school.
A teacher, Maggie Jeppeson, got permission to let us, and eventually about 50 others, in — and then went back to her own home to collect snacks and a dog leash for my mom. Once in the school, it was a sigh of relief. We were safe. We had water, bathrooms, and a place to camp. We started to congregate in the gym, and those with animals took to classrooms.
My dad somehow made it to Walmart. My mom was really encumbered with two dogs — and we were really encumbered with five kids. She wanted my dad to be with her. He bought a kayak at Walmart... and made it as far as the parking lot before giving up. The current was so fast. He threw it in his tiny little Cruz and waited for us.
Maggie's son brought back snacks and a jump rope for my mom, as they don’t have a dog and didn’t have a leash. My mother, being a typical Iowan and not wanting to put anyone out, said, “Oh gosh! Are you sure you won’t need it?
By this time, we were all congregating outside and several people had arrived to the school’s front entrance by boat. Seeing the astonished look on people’s faces with my mom’s question, my smartass-lawyer mouth kicked in and without missing a beat, I hollered out, “WHAT IN THE HELL IS HE GOING TO USE A JUMP ROPE FOR? IS HE GOING TO SKIP SOME ROPE?!” while gesturing wildly to the rushing flood waters.
…we had a good and much need laugh over that.
Will put a cone in the parking lot of the school when we got there to measure how fast the water was coming in. We quickly lost track of the cone. The parking lot at Lincoln was probably succumbed in an hour.
Will kept having to move the Yukon to get away from the water. Eventually, he moved it atop a small knoll outside of the school. These knolls were probably left-over landscaping dirt from the additions and had no purpose until we parked there. That knoll saved our car. Highly recommend installing random knolls.
I'll never forget one of the McNea kids screaming, “Mom! Is that our bench?” As their beautiful cast iron and wood park bench zoom by us, on the opposite side of the school from their house, and many blocks down. Liz confidently confirmed, "YUP!”
As time progressed, the school started to take on water. It was seeping in through the doors. I am honestly surprised it didn’t (while we were there) break the glass of the door. The water just kept coming in higher and higher and the current was faster and faster.
So, we made the decision to move to the library. Mr. Dirkx knows the building inside and out and had showed us where the roof hatch was. Thankfully, one of the highest points of Lincoln is the library and just right around the corner from the roof hatch.
In hindsight, we were lucky to congregate together. The water was cutting off access to various pieces of the building. Structurally, the library was a great place to be.
I texted Patrick Westfall who I knew was acting Chief of Police. Chief Warburton finally took a much-deserved vacation, and ended up having to drive 24 hours straight to get back. He kept telling me we all needed to get to higher ground. And the thing that hit the hardest was when he told me, “Get high. We can always climb down.” And that hit hard.
The water was getting deeper, the current was getting faster. People were falling. I'm confident my mom broke her foot getting tangled up with her dogs and her treasured jump rope, that she still feels she stole from a small child! It was super easy to get your feet swept out from under you.
At some point, I took a video in the background you can hear very loud whooshing as the building took on more and more water. I didn’t realize until a week later, the building had a basement that was rapidly filling.
Looking around at our population: babies, small children, pets and elderly. We had to get together. And as Pat said. We had to get to high ground. There was little risk on the roof.
We swiped rugs from classrooms to put on the “ramps” into the library to help people from falling. Once settled, it was clear the water was only going to rise in the school.
Several of us made the decision that we had to ask all able-bodied people to move to the roof. People who had pets found classrooms or spaces near the library. We narrowed it down so that we had so few people in the library left, that if the water got higher and faster, we could carry them to the hatch and shove them up to the roof. It wouldn't have been the preferred scenario, but it would have made the process go faster.
The ladder was not easy to climb and if people wanted to keep bags, they needed to just get up there with their stuff while time was a luxury.
God bless my husband, who managed to keep five kids entertained up there and away from the edge. Asher can now say he peed off the roof of Lincoln School.
I was texting the governor and Congressman Feenstra. There were helicopters above, I assumed it was the National Guard. I told her I felt like Gilligan. I assumed we would be there for a while, but we were fine. Hungry, tired and wet. But alive and in decent spirits.
I had no idea what was going on in the rest of Spencer, except what I briefly saw on Facebook ...until I read an alarmed post, “there are people on the roof of Lincoln!” That was us. We were the ones people were afraid for.
Mayor Bomgaars called me and asked me if we were in trouble. He had that kind of pulse on the situation. He knew where people were without us blowing up the comm center. He called us.
I explained we were okay, but we had five or so medically and physically fragile people who needed out. They dispatched a boat for them. But made sure to keep our expectations realistic. The rest of us were fine, all things considered. Food started coming in from somewhere and that made for a happier population. Alice managed to find bread, cheese and lunch meat she made herself a little sandwich, and someone sat in it.
We evacuated the five medically fragile and the pregnant woman first. Some of them were rolled out in office chairs. More boats started coming and six by six we sent people from the roof to the staged evacuation door.
Every time the evacuation door was shoved open, four feet of water rushed the building. It was hard for me to keep upright — and I spend most of my days navigating heels.
It was so quiet in the school by then. Little did I know, the whooshing stopped because the basement had filled.
At some point, it was clear we needed to plan for ourselves. Our group had three adults, five kids and two dogs. We had to split up. We knew the three older kids would be easier. So, Will took Anchor and Asher, the easiest of easy, the easiest of the littles, and a dog. My mom and I took Alice, Archie, Alma and a dog. We were some of the last to leave. We had a team, and we were, largely, able.
We sent Will’s team first. A few boats later, the rest of us loaded on to a boat. They put jackets on us and forewarned us it may be a rough ride. We boated out using streets, but only knew they were there because the street signs were peaking just enough through the water.
I tried to keep my cool. That day, I think I only cried three times, until this point.
First, when my friend David Young, former Congressman and Chief of Staff to Senator Grassley called when we first got to the school. I know he has seen these events in his time. He wanted to make sure we were okay and asked how our community was doing. I ran and hid, by what was, eventually, the evacuation door. I knew he understood. But I couldn't let my kids see me cry.
Second, when Lt. Westfall called me to get a lay of “Lincolnland.” I kept interrupting him until I could get to somewhere alone. I’m fairly used to getting calls from cops, but I would take being the lawyer end of that any day over needing their help. He told me I could lose my sh** on him anytime, but not in front of the others.
Third, when I tried to make a video. Spencer was a very scary place to be. I tried to keep it together because we needed to rally. It wasn't easy- I knew we are strong.
Being evacuated was a different story. I lost it. I ugly cried. Seeing the devastation for the first time firsthand. Feet of water, covering the neighborhood for as far as we could see. Cars, houses, the mall, businesses and the ruthless river.
The boat driver was from the National Guard. He had started in Rock Rapids at 3 a.m. while his own home was in peril. The boat helpers were from Storm Lake.
Speaking of which, outside of the legislature, I work for the Buena Vista County Attorney’s Office. This has little bearing on the story, except I was on call. I need to always have a laptop on me. I never knew where I would get stuck, so I hauled it with to the swim meet, to Lincoln, to the gym, to the library, to the roof and to the evacuation boat... where I almost forgot it. Thankfully, they hadn’t pulled away yet and I got it back. At some point, I called my boss he forwarded the phone to himself — which I am very thankful for. But I do like to brag about how I saved the county laptop and phone.
We were dropped off at the corner of Hwy. 71 and McDonalds. For non-locals, there was so much water, we easily boated right on by a McDonalds.
Waiting for us, we’re McKinley Bigmac Koch and Marlin Quee (who work with us at the farm) and Kayla Koch, McKinley's sister. Only by the grace of God, had I brought wellies. I am notorious for wearing shoes for fashion, not function. The second I stepped off the boat, my boots were filled with water. There was that much water.
We walked across the highway to our car. There were shuttles waiting to take us to the shelter, but we knew we had cars waiting and a place to go. Marlin brought our Wag, we met up with my dad and we headed to our house.
We left home around 7:30 a.m. and got home around 3 p.m. I have no idea how so much happened so fast. I walked 20,531 steps in water that day. A workout I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
We were simply loading the car for a swim meet. Most of us were wearing shirts screen printed with “Spencer Swim.” It provided for some levity as we sloshed around the school.
But, swim we did.
We just kept swimming.
And in the days since, our communities just instinctively swam.
We’ve made it a month. We will make it. Just keep swimming.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here