The flood this year in Valley City has been terrible, and I believe it might be the worst that has happened in the area. During the week or two before the flood was going to hit the Valley City the community started to prepare for the worst. They quickly made Sandbag Central up at the Wintershow area, and had lots and lots of volunteers to help fill the bags. After the bags were filled people would then go out and lay the sandbags at the places that needed them the most. There was a great turnout of volunteers for these efforts and soon they not only were putting sandbags everywhere, but also using trucks to haul dirt to locations so they could put up huge dirt dikes where they had room to get the trucks in there.
The communication that occurred during all of this was exceptional. The KOVC radio station informed the town of any new information on the flood, sandbagging help, and where to go if you wanted to volunteer. All of the students at VCSU received daily emails from Dr. Steven Shirley about all of the help needed and where to go, along with other emails from faculty and staff at the college. Along with all of this the city had meetings almost every day that you could attend to know exactly what is being done around the city to save the community.
Then when the flood came all the hard work everyone put it paid off, so we thought. Then there were a few breaches but we patched those up rather quickly and we thought we had saved the city from a disaster. Then the sewer system backed up and Valley City was without water, which maximized all the problems and truly made this a crisis. Everyone was not supposed to use water for about a week until they got things under control, then businesses eventually were allowed to open back up. To this day the residents of the city are not supposed to use water, which is a way bigger problem than many people think because that means no showers, going to the bathroom in porta-potties, no dishes, no washer for clothes, it just pretty much sucks.
I think everything they did will pay off and the city will recover from this fairly well. It may take some time however, because the city will have to clean everything up, which could take quite a long time.
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i agree for the most part the city officals and government officals handled this situation very well. They kept the public informed and up to date and tried to keep everyone positive that we will beat this if we all work together and follow certain guidelines.
ReplyDeleteIt was to bad that the sewer system had to fail but we are making it through it. I agree that it is going to take a few years to get everything back to normal and better than normal for that part in Valley City.
I also agree the city did a great job and handled the situations at hand. Having daily meetings and new conferences when needed was very good for the members of the Valley City community.
ReplyDeleteYou have no idea how much of a blessing it is to have the sewer system back up and running. We are still pumping the water out when we take showers and of course only flushing our toliets when needed but it is much better then the outdoor toliets. It will take the city awhile to get back to normal but they are taking it step by step and day by day and they will get there.