December 14, 2005 As I Remember It

I'll be gone for most of tomorrow (doctor's appointment) so I thought I would post this now.

The day as I remember it. It was 7am; Pam was already up and in the kitchen. I was laying in bed thinking about what I needed to get done during the day. The phone rang and a neighbor told me the Upper Reservoir had broken and I needed to "think about what I needed to do." At seven in the morning it's hard to decide what is the most important thing to do in an emergency, so I called my son, Jason, and daughter-in-law, Addie in Springfield. I thought I should let them know what had happened in case they heard about it later in the day and would be worried about our safety. My son told me to pack the van, grab the cats and head to Springfield. I said that I had looked at my maps and I thought we would be just fine since we are a half mile from the river. He said, "You sound just like one of those old guys in New Orleans, get out of Lesterville." I said I wasn't leaving, so Jason said he would take the day off and was heading to Lesterville in case we needed help.

The thing I remember about the rest of the morning was how hard it was to get any reliable information. The radio and TV kept saying that a twenty foot wall of water was coming down the Black River. Some reports said that parts of Lesterville and Annapolis were flooded. It turned out that none of that was true. The local phone system quickly overloaded like the worst Mothers Day, so it was hard to call out and for others to call in. I did receive two calls from friends in St. Louis (both own cabins in the area) and around noon I got a call from an old friend in Venice, Italy. If someone in Venice is worried about you and high water there might be a problem. If you don’t have phone service you also can’t get online, so it was mid afternoon before I posted a note on my web site that everyone was OK and the lodges were fine.

Addie called to say that a news crew and satellite truck from KY3, the NBC station in Springfield,were on their way to Lesterville. Jason once worked for KY3 and was the weekend operator of the satellite truck, so when he got to our home he said, “let’s go up to Lenny’s and see what going on in the truck.” There were seven satellite trucks in Lesterville that day, three at Lenny’s and four at the school. After driving up to the lower reservoir we went to the school and it was an amazing site. Every government agency that you can imagine was there wondering what to do. For the locals it was like “old home week” with everyone trading stories about the morning. Jason decided that we really were going to be OK and he headed back to Springfield.

Addie called again to ask if the KY3 news crew could spend the night at out home. Since the lodges were closed and there aren’t many motel rooms in Lesterville, those spending the night in order to do more reporting on the 15^th were having a hard time finding a place to stay. So I drove up to town at 10pm where Jim Hankins, Cara Connelly, and Jim VanDillen were sending a live shot back to Springfield and after the news they followed me back to Peola Valley.

And so ended a long and interesting day. Those who were here will never forget the experience. We were lucky that thing turned out as they did, and yet, one year later we are still dealing with a dirty Lower Reservoir, a maybe rebuild of the Upper Reservoir, and all the work and political problems at the Shut-Ins. So it will be a long time until the last chapter is written about this event.