Residents still living in old Valmeyer hope to avoid reliving Great Flood of ’93
While new Valmeyer sits safe and dry above the bluffs, it’s an all-too-familiar situation for residents and farmers in low-lying areas near the Mississippi River.
The river is at its second-highest point since the Great Flood of ‘93, and those still living between the river and bluffs worked long shifts to keep the levees in working condition and residents near the river moved farm equipment and their personal belongings to higher ground.
Many breathed a sigh of relief Wednesday as news came that the river would crest lower than expected spread across the region.
But the feeling of optimism is a nervous one, Sheriff Neal Rohlfing said.
“The river is rapidly evolving and with a lot of changes it’s very difficult to predict (what will happen) when the river’s at this level with different levels of rain coming in, Rohlfing said. “We’re still encouraging residents to plan and prepare for evacuation.”
The Army Corps of Engineers lowered the expected Mississippi River crest to 45.3 feet from 46 feet, while also delaying the date of the crest by a day to Friday, June 7.
That’s welcomed news, Rohlfing said, as it prevents a mandatory evacuation order and curfew for the lower areas of Valmeyer, where many homes and farms are still located.
“The crest has changed several times over the past couples days,” he said. “Its been very difficult to keep up with that.”
Residents like Dennis Chandler and his son Tyler aren’t taking any risks. Chandler said his family has lived in their home that sits near a levee built around Fountain Creek for almost seven years. On Wednesday, they began moving their things to a family friend’s home.
As he and his son loaded a trailer with the home’s furniture, tractors laid rock on top of the levee to increase their height and strengthening it.
“We were waiting to see what the crest was going to do — at 46 feet we were going to leave anyway — but when they started doing this I thought it might be best to get out,” Chandler said. “It’s kind of a headache but you’re better off being safe than you are sorry.”
Chandler said his former in-laws’ farmhouse, which belonged to the Gummersheimers, was swept away during the 1993 flood, along with a huge portion of the old town of Valmeyer.
“I lived through it,” he said. “That’s why we’re going to give them space, move out and let them do their things and hopefully in two or three days we’ll come back.”
In 1993, the Mississippi swallowed the entire town of Valmeyer after a critical levee was breached. Before the flood, almost 325 homes, 25 businesses, three churches and a school sat in the flood plain.
In the years that followed, the city relocated up the bluff to the new Valmeyer, where a good portion of the village’s population of roughly 1,200 now lives, past the bluffs that look over the old village.
Rohlfing said when the flooding started, he and other county officials met with residents who lived through the destruction of old Valmeyer to find out how things could have gone better in 1993.
“We talked to some of the people who went through this in 1993 and one of the first things we asked was what were some of the mistakes we made?” Rohlfing said. “
The residents pointed out that preparing for a possible breach would have drastically changed how things happened and that giving a specific river level for evacuation would be important.
Learning lessons from the past
Rohlfing said the mistakes and lessons Valmeyer learned in 1993 have played a major part in this year’s flood and many years prior. Although, he said it’s been years since this much water has seeped past the levees into the nearby farmland.
For now, Monroe County’s Sheriff’s Department and other officials who are fending off the flood are keeping a close eye on the levees. Roughly 12 sand boils — early signs that a levee could fail — have been fixed in the past week, two of which were critical. Rolfhing said members of the area levee district are working all day to secure the levees.
Residential passes are keeping those who shouldn’t be in old Valmeyer or on the levees away as well. Rohlfing said, like other counties, sightseers and otherwise have been an issue on the levees.
“You try to mitigate things as much as you can,” Rohlfing said. “There’s a lot of things going on down here and we just really want to limit the amount of people who are down here.”
But Rohlfing said manning the checkpoints is difficult with so much work going on around the area. National Guard members have been requested to man those checkpoints, but the sheriff said Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s orders to the roughly 400 soldiers deployed in Illinois does not encompass that sort of work.
He said the county is currently writing senators and requesting the governor amend those orders, so places like Valmeyer also can be assisted.
Rumors have also proved to be a problem for Rohlfing’s department. He said he has had to take to social media several times this week to dispel rumors that a levee would be purposely breached, to relieve pressure, which he said hasn’t even been discussed.
It all has made for a very busy few weeks, he said, with one eye on the river and another on the levees that are keeping it at bay.
As for families like Chandler’s, the hope is that the river recedes and the levees hold. He recalled his neighbor’s home had four feet of water after the levees breached and swept away old Valmeyer, something he hopes to avoid reliving.
“Four feet of water, that’s enough,” he said. “I’m hoping we don’t have to deal with that. Hopefully, we stay dry.”
This story was originally published June 5, 2019 at 5:01 PM.