“They redrew the flood line plain," she said. "Only one corner of my lot that was in the flood plain. That just had a tree on it."
Love, who lives about 200 feet from Hickory Creek, was at work when she heard about the flooding. One of her co-workers showed her a video of Riverside Drive, the road her house is on, flooding.
“When we got to the house, everything was just saturated,” Love said.
She and her family spent the next few days dragging everything that rested in the bottom foot and a half of her house to the curb.
“We were able to salvage anything that was stored from about the knee up,” she said.
After the water level receded, there was still standing water in her house. “It was muddy, and it smelled like fish,” Love said.
Love’s home was one of about 150 in Neosho that were affected by what Mayor Ben Baker calls the “Neosho tsunami." In all of Newton County, about 260 homes were affected by the flooding at the end of April, according to Rebecca Williams, creator of the Neosho Recovery Info website.
Now, there are couches, pieces of drywall, mattresses, desks and more piled high along the curb outside her home.
Emergency personnel made it around to all the affected areas after the water receded and advised residents about what they could and could not save.
Love said the plan is to spray the house with fungicide, and mold and mildew retardant. “After that, we’ll pretty much rebuild everything,” she said.
Love said she was grateful for all the offers of assistance she has received and for the support the city and county have provided.
“It’s comforting in a disaster to know that people care,” she said.
One avenue of support for people who were affected by the flood was the Multi-Agency Resource Center, which opened Monday in the Lampo Building to aid people in finding resources and answers to questions they had.
“The whole point of MARC is to make a one-stop shop for the client,” said John Matthews, a Red Cross personal information officer.
Matthews expected over 300 people to use MARC.
People affected by the flood first register and determine what their needs are, then they make their way through appropriate stations, where they are given information and tips regarding how to move forward.
Another organization working to ease the stress for the people whose homes were flooded is Team Rubicon.
The veteran and first responder volunteer organization will station 100 men and women in Neosho for the next 30 days to help with the cleanup. Monetarily, the organization will be providing upward of $2.5 million worth of labor.
During their time in Neosho, the volunteers will provide damage assessments, help cut out ruined drywall, cut down trees and haul away anything that needs to be hauled away.
“We try to bridge that gap between the initial response and long-term recovery,” said Bob Pries, the commanding officer of the Team Rubicon Operation Ozark Edge, which is what the recovery effort in Neosho has been named.
To allow members some comfort while staying in Neosho, the organization is looking for donations of, among other things, refrigerators, a freezer and an ice machine. The nonprofit was in Joplin within 14 hours of the Joplin tornado in May 2011; 25 volunteers worked for eight days.
Some are calling the flood a tsunami because of how quickly the water rose. Dana Daniel, Neosho city manager, said the speed of the flood could simply be attributed to how heavily the rain fell.
“We just haven’t experienced that in most of our residents' lifetime,” he said.
With Hickory Creek so close to residencies on the eastern side of town, Daniel said, only so much can be done.
“Rainfall just fell in an area extremely heavily in a short period of time,” he said. “The ground was already very saturated, so there was nowhere for the water to go.”
Daniel said he wasn’t yet sure how much damage was done monetarily.
“It’s disappointing to see the damage to homes and the way it affects families,” Daniel said. “That’s what we are dealing with now. We have to roll up our sleeves and kind of help people get back on their feet.”
A few blocks down the road from Love’s home, Jerry Hoover sat on the back of a trailer full of the appliances from his home. None of them could be salvaged.
The water made it up to the bottom of the windows in his house — about a foot and a half high.
“Hell yes, it was scary,” Hoover said.
When the water level went down, Hoover and his wife, Wilma, walked a few blocks to the Benton Elementary School, which opened as a shelter, then found a place to stay.
Except for some clothing, all of the Hoovers' things were ruined. After living in the house for 42 years, they are now looking for a new house.
“We don’t want to fix it up,” he said. “It costs too much to get this fixed, we already bought it once.”
Erica Bullard, Hoover’s granddaughter, said it’s sad to see the the house where she spent much of her childhood in such a depressing state.
“This was home,” she said.
Across the street, several handymen were working on four rental houses owned by Robert Peters. The bottom 3 feet of drywall and insulation were removed from all the walls within the houses. Basically everything that was touched by the water was thrown out.
“It’s a horrible thing,” said Justin Carnes, one of the workers. “When we first started, I was carrying out people’s dressers and emptying them out and throwing Sheetrock and stuff in them while they’re watching.”
But he said there are sometimes good moments in the middle of disasters such as this.
“I kicked what was left of the toilet and a gold ring popped up,” Carnes said. It was the ring of the renter’s great-grandmother, and she had been looking for it for a year.
He said Peters deserves some of the credit because he is going “above and beyond” as far as getting his rental homes repaired and livable for his renters.
Numbers regarding the monetary damage and the number people affected by the flood in both McDonald County and Newton County were not immediately available.
Want to help?
To donate items to Team Rubicon Operation Ozark Edge, contact Rebecca Williams at 417-434-0379 or to donate funds, visit teamrubiconusa.org/operation/operation-ozark-edge.
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©2017 The Joplin Globe (Joplin, Mo.)
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