FOREST CITY, Mo. - It has been five months since the Missouri National Guard was activated to respond to flooding along the Missouri River in the northwest portion of the state. The urgency of the flood has subsided, but the battle continues for many.
Now flooded with paperwork and phone calls, Kathy Kunkel, Holt County clerk, still leads the charge.
"It's just a different phase of things," said Kunkel.
Kunkel recently revisited a few of the combat zones where local residents and Citizen-Soldiers battled the flood waters. She speculated, had it not been for the support of the National Guard, the outcome could have been much different.
Drawing from previous flood fight experience, Kunkel knew all too well what lay in front of her.
"That's the thing about us, as far as Holt County, being unique in this event," said Kunkel. "We didn't go from '93 to here without having a disaster. This is our sixth disaster. We're not new at this."
Utilizing all the resources available to her, Kunkel said she knew what the county faced was beyond their capability.
"We went to SEMA and said we've got to have help from a state resource pool and the Guard is a perfect fit," said Kunkel.
"As we moved further into the project and recognized that we were going to be evacuating five towns, and sandbagging along 52 miles of river frontage, and needing to set up checkpoints, we went back to SEMA and said we absolutely need the National Guard's assistance with this," she said.
"This is beyond the capabilities of our very tired and worn out local volunteer firemen and our levee district board. "
On June 21, Holt County experienced their first big levee breach. Kunkel said within 48 hours, the entire basin south of 159 Highway, which is about six miles wide, was filled with water eight feet deep.
"It's kind of like dominoes," said Kunkel. "Once the big ones fail out on the river site, the interior ones just don't stand a chance. It doesn't take long, they all just tumble."
The water treatment facility that serviced Oregon and Forest City found itself in the crosshairs of the flood.
Local volunteers did much of the dirt work to help buffer the facility, but sandbags were also needed to heavily secure the structure.
"The Guard was able to come in with skid loaders, a sandbagging machine and a lot of good strong people to help work on a hot day," said Kunkel.
Eventually water made its way up to the sandbags, but never contaminated the water.
"Had we not have done that it definitely would have threatened the municipal water supply and put a little over 1,000 people without clean drinking water," said Kunkel. "That's just one example of the way we were able to partner with the Guard and saving a critical infrastructure."
What happened in Forest City by no means was an isolated event. Communities all along the Missouri River have war stories regarding the flood. Though in the midst of a disaster, there still existed an element of resolve and determination that was encouraging.
Along the Missouri River, Citizen-Soldiers and local residents worked side-by-side, joining forces to battle the flood. Col. Greg Mason, Task Force 110 commander, is quick to point out that this wasn't a fight of any single agency.
"Even though the Guard seemed to be the main focus for the response, many other state, county and local agencies made the response a success," said Mason.
Kunkel said without the National Guard her county definitely would have struggled to stay afloat.
"I think that the people here are very resourceful and they were doing everything they could possibly do," said Kunkel.
"When the Guard was able to come in here, it let some of our local people just step back a minute and take a breath and kind of assess where they had been at. So, there was some mental therapy that was really involved with seeing the Guard roll into town," said Kunkel, with a lump in her throat and tears in her eyes. "There were people that said 'Oh! Thank God they're here. They can help us.' "
As the commander, Mason traveled up and down the river witnessing firsthand the untamed river.
"I got a lot of windshield and helicopter time in this summer, with some 15 to 18 hour days, meeting with local officials," said Mason. "What most impressed me was the resiliency of our citizens no matter how bad it was. Both young and old came out to fight the flood and worked hand-in-hand with our Soldiers doing whatever task was required to hold back the water. All the people I worked with in northwest Missouri had that Midwest work ethic of hard work and not quitting until the job was done."
In addition, Mason gives great credit to his Soldiers that served on the frontline.
"We have great, hard working Soldiers in the Missouri National Guard," said Mason. "They have done everything our state and country has asked them to do, both here and in combat. Many of the Soldiers volunteered to stay on duty until the end of the call-up, knowing it would impact their whole summer."
During the flood fight, the two biggest enemies that existed, aside from the water, were the duration of the battle and breadth of the battlefield.
"Due to the length of time we were involved, we had to rotate some of our Soldiers," said Mason. "They came from all over the state to respond to the emergency and had to return to their civilian jobs. The employers were really supportive of the Guard's mission, but we realize the long emergency put a strain on some employers, too."
Mason praised those employers for their sacrifice. Many troops left their full-time jobs to be on flood duty. Some employers reached out to him to let him know that their employee would be able to stay on duty longer than originally requested.
In Holt County, Kunkel said that from the time of the first breach it took 106 days for water to recede and be back in its channel. Some areas had lake-like conditions for better than 90 days.
"This was not your typical flood where the water comes up and a few days later the water went away," said Kunkel. "This was heavy water with current that stayed over the entire summer. It was devastating."
The battlefield stretched across 15 counties.
"Our task force did cover a lot of territory, but we train for this type of displacement of forces across the battlefield," said Mason. "With technology, and the mobility we had with our military equipment, it was not that challenging."
Kunkel said she struggles with accurately conveying the extent of this disaster to people not from the area.
"Until you're here, and you get out and walk on one of these fields, you don't realize how big this is," said Kunkel. "When we tell you that it covered the flood plain, people go 'OK.' It doesn't resonate."
In a county of less than 5,000 people, many of them farmers or somehow connected to farming, the flood adversely affected wallets. Kunkel said that of the 165,000 acres of farm ground that was impacted, about 100,000 planted acres were lost.
"Financially we are struggling as a county," said Kunkel. "We didn't anticipate doing this five years running. So, it's really becoming a financial hardship."
In addition to loss of income generated from farming, Holt County lost sales tax dollars with the closing of Big Lake State Park on Memorial Day, little interstate traffic for four months and destroyed homes being removed from their tax roll.
"I have all of these people that are unemployed, and then I lost the ag acreage," said Kunkel. "It was about $110 million in commodities. If we could have just picked all of the corn and soybeans that was out here and just sold it on the market - $110 million. That doesn't count all the fuel and the tires, and the secondary jobs."
Now at a time when farmers should be in their fields harvesting crops, many farms sit eerily still and barren, forever scarred from the Missouri River.
According to Kunkel, damages are still being assessed. She said there are 13 levee breaches in Holt County ranging from 50 feet to a half mile wide. Some are just now being looked at, while others have yet to be evaluated.
"Every day we are approaching winter and the opportunity to close those holes is getting slimmer by the day," said Kunkel. "We will not see all of those levees fixed and completed and able to withstand a rise in the river in the spring. We will see flood water again next spring. How many days and how wide, I do not know."