Rural residents near Blair assess flood damage as recovery effort begins

BLAIR, Neb. (WOWT) - Since the Missouri River’s waters have gone down, residents and officials around Blair are assessing how much of an impact the recent flood had.

City administrator Phil Green says the town isn’t really in recovery mode because it kept the floodwaters at bay, for the most part. Other than an apartment complex that had been surrounded by water and the river getting close to the Longview Mobile Home Court, he said Blair didn’t take a hit.

Whatever damage that was done, he said it’s not enough to qualify for FEMA reimbursement.

”Really, we had no equipment damaged at all,” Green said. “We didn’t lose any particular items, we didn’t have to have any of our employees work overtime. We knew long enough ahead of time that the water was going to be rising, that we could take care of it during the days. So none of those personnel costs end up being reimbursable by FEMA.”

He credited the minimal damage to the mitigation efforts the city undertook after the 2011 flood.

“It really does pay off over time if you pay attention to your problems, take advantage of trying to get those mitigation programs in place so that when these other kind of disasters do happen, they’re relatively minor,” Green said. “It becomes more of an inconvenience than it is a disaster.”

He said if the city learned anything from this flood, it’s that it needs to find a better way to get to the town’s intake station when the waters rise in the future.

Not everyone in the area came out unscathed.

The town’s levee does not extend north of the Highway 30 bridge. That’s where there was floodwaters in some of the low-lying areas.

Lois’s Driftwood Inn, which is just north of town, said the water didn’t get as high as it did in 2011, but it was still too close for comfort. One staff member told 6 News it got as far as underneath the restaurant’s back porch.

“That’s kind of when people were getting a little iffy because no one actually knew when it was going to crest,” said cook Jay Zemek.

Some were less fortunate, like Mike Lupardus, who co-owns the Cottonwood Cove Marina and RV Resort. He said around 35 percent of the property was underwater. 6 News also spoke to a farmer whose crops got swamped, and residents in that area whose basement flooded.

Green said those spots are outside of its municipality though.

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