Residents, businesses mop up after near-record weekend flooding

On the edge of State Highway 10 on Monday, where a mile of river bottom was now a muddy lake, just enough so motorists had to swerve over toward the centerline a bit to avoid it, stood four reflective orange triangles and the corner of Randy Gammel’s house.

It was put there on purpose on wheels, not by the flooding Illinois River that hit near-record flood stage Sunday, but Gammel is among many who see a change in Oklahoma’s most popular scenic river and are adjusting to life in its floodplain.

“In the first one, 2011, we lost the whole trailer house. Washed it away,” he said. “I went through this again two years ago and it was $8,000, maybe $10,000 just on the inside of the house. This time it was easier to pull it out and a whole lot cheaper.”

The only thing that washed away this time was a front porch that had been moved higher as well, unfortunately just not high enough, it lay covered in mud in debris in the tree line downhill from the home.

Illinois River residents and businesses mopped up Monday morning as the river dropped from near-record levels reached Sunday evening with nearly 8 inches of rainfall in some parts of the basin Saturday.

The river crested at 9 p.m. Sunday at Tahlequah at 29.35 feet, just about 16 inches shy of the record level 30.7 feet hit in December 2015, according to National Weather Service river gauge readings. The Watts river gauge, near the Arkansas state line, measured a record 30.16 feet at 10 a.m. Sunday, 18 inches higher than in 2015.

“In 2011 we had two events when the water got almost this high, in April and May, then in December 2015 and now this one. That’s four in less than seven years,” said Ed Fite, who has more than three decades overseeing operations along the river, a job he carries out now as vice president of the water quality division for Grand River Dam Authority.

“The vast majority of people here, in the last five years, have come to respect the Illinois River Basin is going to flood and they know if they’re not on high ground or if they are susceptible to floodwaters, they will prepare or evacuate.”

Flood events on the river nowadays are more “flashy,” he said. Some people were stranded and rescues were necessary Sunday, but only one person was taken for medical treatment and that was due to hypothermia, he said.

A river level above 11 feet at the Tahlequah gauge is considered a flood event, Fite said. Since records have been kept in the early 1900s that mark has been hit 209 times.

“During my career, over 30 years, I’ve personally witnessed 81 of the 209. Of those 209, 21 have been over 20 feet. Of those 21, I have witnessed eight during my career, so I’ve learned a thing or two,” he said.

The basin has changed, he said. “In the 1980s we had a population of about 200,000 in the basin, now it’s over 600,000,” he said.

More people means more developments, more parking lots, streets, yards, homes, businesses, pastures and roofs that mean faster runoff, he said. It was a problem exacerbated this weekend by a wet April that left saturated many of those grounds that might have absorbed some of that runoff.

“It’s time for us as a community, I’m not talking about government involvement, but for those of us who live here to assess whether we will continue to repair some of these repetitive flood sites,” Fite said.

“All the things that we’ve done, the synergy of all or our efforts, we do things to the landscape and Mother Nature responds in kind and she will serve up a warning from time to time that this is her floodplain and she is going to cleanse it, whether we want her to or not,” he said

Float operators will be busy in coming weeks getting campgrounds and facilities back in shape for the Memorial Day weekend crowds — many sites that normally would offer electrical hookups or plumbing simply won’t be ready, operators said.

Some residents have their hands full just getting their lives back together.

The Peyton’s Place float and campground business, in its 15th year of operation, was better prepared for only its second time to have water inside its main building, Monday. Trey Peyton used a squeegee to push water and silt off the new ceramic floor at the main store building.

“Last time it was 18 inches deep in here,” he said. “We had hardwood floors and all that flooring buckled. It was ruined. We replaced it with this.”

This time screws will be removed to pull siding off the outer parts of the building to help dry out walls and insulation instead of having to rip walls apart. “We’re definitely a little more prepared this time around,” he said.

The camp has less trouble with things washing away than it does having things deposited.