First-hand accounts of flooding look pretty bad

Fields, bridges, roads washed out

Devastating damage. Heavy rains and flooding has left water over roads, bridges out and mudslide remains to deal with.

That’s what Westby state rep. Lee Nerison has seen seen Thursday, driving around the area of his district hardest hit by flooding in Vernon and Crawford counties.

The damage has possibly reached levels of the back-to-back, hundred-year floods of 2007 and 2008. The farms especially, Nerison says, are hard to look at.

“Being a farmer myself, I’ve been driving along there and looking at three feet of water in the corn fields right now,” he said. “And, some soybean fields, the water ran across them so fast, they’re totally lying flat. I don’t know if they’re going to be able to get any harvest from that.”

Nerison says the water will have to recede before a complete assessment of the damage can be completed.  

Even though it was hard to even get to some towns, Nerison said it would have been much harder without the tireless efforts of first responders.

“Between the fire, first responders, police, they’re there making sure to block the roads when they know there’s water over them, to make sure nobody’s driving in water,” Nerison said. “And they stay until it’s over and done.”

So, Nerison remains positive about ability of the people in his district to eventually persevere against the damage.

“That’s what we have around here,” he said. “A lot of people have that attitude, ‘You’re going to put me down for a little bit, but you’re not going to hold me down. We’re going to come back.'”

Nerison is hoping, after the flood waters recede, a damage assessment will trigger a federal government response.