Montrose flooding displaces Troy, Tacey and kids

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The city flood on September 12, 2019 in Montrose caused us to be homeless.
The water in our house was about a foot on the main level leaving the house unlivable. We were very lucky that Troy’s parents allowed us to stay with them temporarily until we figured out what we were going to do.
There is a lot of pictures and comments here so hold tight

A little back story...
In the spring of 2019 Montrose experienced flooding but to a smaller scale. The spring and summer brought more than normal amounts of rain not allowing the river and land to go back to normal state. When the flood started on September 12 the rain had nowhere to go. On Tuesday the state had massive rains and several tornado's in Sioux Falls. The rain continued coming down from Tuesday to Thursday. The actual flooding started on Wednesday early evening but did not get bad until Thursday. They told us that the water was not going to crest until Saturday late morning.

Water up quite a bit but this is very early on in the flood. Any water behind the red line is where the water is typically. I know I'm a great artist.

This is the road into town that also runs right in front of our house. The middle of the road it is wet but the water was starting to come onto the road on both sides.

This is one of the three ways into town at the beginning of the flood. This should be a river not an odd shaped pond.

Here is the softball field on Wednesday early evening. The water on the right side of the building should not be there.

This should be more of an open ditch and is usually very little to no water.

On a normal day this is the road to our pool. The water here thinks it needs to be up and over the road. This is nowhere close to where it was going to go from here. The red line my attempt at showing where the road is normally.

Thursday September 12...The day of the flood
The town at this point knew that we were flooding and were told that it was going to be worse than the flood of 1993. I don't have anything to compare to because I was not living there at that time. The flood of 1993 was a flash flood not a slower rising flood like the one we are experiencing. Troy and I watched the family across the street get an early start moving their belongings out of their house. I assumed that they were moving belongings from their basement to save it from flood waters. It is not uncommon for them to have to run pumps to keep the water out of their basement. The river runs right behind their house. Only to find out they were actually moving all their belongings out.

7:25 AM Thursday morning

This is the road that is in front of our house. At this point you could not get out of town using this road. You can't see from here but right in front of that truck is where the water stops.

This is right by the tree that I have previously shown. I'm standing at the curb and the water is coming in at a "U" angle. That big tree is at a higher point as I found out during the flood.

The neighbor's behind us has the start of an unwanted pond.

Ryleigh and Elijah are looking at how crazy the water is. This is the last view that they had of the house before they were taken to their grandmas house. Elijah was allowed to see the house on Sunday but Ryleigh was not allowed into the house for about two weeks.

11 am
We decided to start to pack things up, as the water is on a mission and it is not giving up. I am unbelievably over whelmed as to where to start and what we need to bring with us. I knew we didn't have a lot of space in the van to move many belongings much less time. I am also have to figure out what is the most important belongings that we have so that we can get them upstairs if time allows.
Troy took the kids over to his parents house for his mom to watch so we could use as much of the van as we could. As he did that I started to gather clothes together. Not thinking clearly, I only grabbed a few days of clothes but that is better than nothing I guess. Being so overwhelmed I almost could not think clear enough to get the belongings we needed as far a clothing much less anything else. When we go anywhere I always put together a check list of items that we need. There was no time for that jazz now. At this point it was not a reality that we probably will not be back living there in a few days or possibly ever. Got everything packed I think but my brain was on overload.
Now, what do I have and where it is that I need to get upstairs. Pictures and important documents upstairs you go. The garage started to look like a natural disaster itself because I tore threw as fast as I could trying to get to what I needed. Luckily the neighbors were done across the street so they were now helping us out. While we moved the pictures and important things upstairs, Elijah worked in the kitchen. He took all the things that were in the low cabinets in the kitchen and placed them on the counter or table. One last run threw of the house and we left what we knew of the house. A little bit before we left we had to sign a form that stated that we were told about the mandatory evacuation.
Not too much after that the electricity for the evacuation area was shut off.

Here is the poor big tree that has been shown before but it is now getting closer to being under water as well. This is taken at 11:30 AM

12:30

Right by the road blocker is a small gray blob. This is a bucket that Troy put in the street to show how much the water was going up. He did this around 7:30 am. This is a great visual on how much the water came up in a few hours. At this point the water was starting to climb on our driveway.

1 PM

Here I am looking in at out north side lawn. The lawn was getting ready to show all the water that it was drowning in. You could feel the squishy feeling of the water as you walked on the lawn. Now the street was completely covered with water.

The big tree is now just a small island now.

2 PM

This is the view looking to the north of our house. There should only be grass and a road here but not now.

This is the road in and out of town but looking the other direction. In this picture the water at the bottom is supposed to be a road. This is the other road that runs by my house as we are on a corner.

2:30 PM

At 2:30 PM Troy and I went down to the fire hall to get lunch. They had lunch for the people who were affected and the volunteers that were helping out. This is a true example of when the community pulls together to help each other out. Here the community is bagging sand for those who need it. They canceled school for the day and a lot of students came down to help out.

I showed this road in and out of town in the pictures of the early early part of the flood. It is now all the way over the road. That boat is one they would later ride up and down the street in front of our house to look for anyone that needed help out. Talk about a surreal moment. Seeing that boat going on the road where cars are supposed to be.

You are looking in at the softball fields from a different direction. Now the water has compleatly covered the field, parking lot, and playground.

This is part of the campgrounds where the lower end is going under the water.

This is the same road that I have shown before that runs in front of our house. Here I am at the north end of the flood looking south.

3 PM
One of the bridges out of town. Sadly we have bridges coming and going to town. They had to move the truck and boat because the water was getting.

Here is the pool road and the park but with more water.

I cannot get any closer to that road because they blocked traffic. This is the road in front of our house but it is over the highway as well now.

This is the softball fields again. They got up a sandbag barricade to hopefully stop it from coming up any more. It is not shown here but, I have pictures later, there is a corn elevator. They are trying their hardest to keep water away from that.

The neighbor's driveway is disappearing.

The red dot is our lawn. This is the street directly to the north of us. I am standing a block away. When we went to lunch the water was about a foot on the street from both sides.

More water on our north side lawn. Not that we needed any more water.

The big tree is now swimming. I didn’t know that mailboxes swam but I guess September 12 taught me that they can.

It’s becoming more and more real that we were going to be flooded. At first it didn't seem real. The first half of our lawn is now under. About a half or so of our driveway is covered in water.

There is now only an island between our swing set and the neighbors yard where they have water.

Our front yard is getting closer to being completely under all the water. Now you can't see the side walk or that there was a street.

Sadly the water is touching the back of our house. I am not sure if the water was going in the house yet. If it was it was going into the cellar. We only had dirt under the house where the pipes are. It also serves as a place to go in case of a tornado.

4:30 PM
The water is now touching all sides of our house. It is probably going inside but I could not confirm or deny it.

The front lawn is completely covered with water and somewhat deep in others.

There is barely any grass that is not covered between the two lawns.

The road in front of our house.

Same road as the above but looking to the north. By the fire hydrant is the road north of us.

5 PM

I showed the picture of the softball park and said that there was a corn elevator. This is what I was talking about. The little boat here is a family's boat from across the street. This is the only way they could get to their house at this point.

Look my house is on local news not good to be on the news in this way. I will put a link below for the actual news coverage.

5:30 PM

Keegan is making light of the situation. He is enjoying the dry weather. He is waiting to go to the fire hall to get dinner because they were serving that for us. They fed us for a week or so.

Troy and Keegan are walking to supper.

6:30 PM

More and more water. The water just keeps going and going. Mother nature does not get the idea that we do not want any more water.

7 pm

I am standing a block up and almost a block away from my house. This area is now under mandatory evacuation. At this point it probably took almost 15 minutes to walk to our house because the water was so high. There are points that water is halfway up my thigh. It is really hard to tell where the road is and the grass. The sewers are starting to back up and you could see oils in the water. At this point we were not allowed to use any water. The next day they spread out numerous outhouses because there would be no water or at all for several days.

Our house

This should be our driveway but not anymore.

You are looking down from our front room window. The green of the grass can't even be seen.

The water is in our front room now and still has a lot to come up still.

This is the entryway

Our kitchen and sorry about the shoes they were not important so we just left them.

Troy and my room that is halfway covered.

It is now going on the stairs. Sorry about the junk floating. It is from the flood itself and the furnace.

I guess that the one thing that liked all this to a small degree is our garden. It is going to love all the fertilizer.

With all this being said we did lose everything. If we fix the house up again it would be $75,000 to $100,000. We will need to build up the walls, lay plastic to seal off the floors and put up some more support beams just in the basement. On the main floor we need to put all new flooring, new cupboards, drywall, insulation, new shower, and paint everything. We will need a new hot water heater, refrigerator, oven, and heater. Oh don't leave out we need new all new doors. We will then need to pay a company to do after a disaster care for the upstairs and then paint everything up there. We would also need to put all new siting on the outside. All that is just in the house we have not started to touch the garage/shed. The house itself was not worth even close to that to start out with and now you could not pay someone to take it.

So here we have to start over again basically. We could save the clothes and a few other things that could be disinfected but that was it. The belongings that could not ever be replaced like pictures are good as well but that is about it.

We are asking if you could help us out. Anything and everything will help us. If you can't help we compleatly understand but please re post this on your page. Those of you who know me well know that I don't like asking others for things much less money. I don't want to be a burden on others but this has hit us hard. I also understand the meaning of money and that it does not just grow on trees. We are going from owning a house to having to rent on one income because of my health. This is a wake up call for not taking things for granted because everything can change in a minute.

Thank you for reading and helping us out during our hard time.
Troy and Tacey Brady

Here are some links that show you the flood as well. A few are from the news and there are a few from the air.

https://www.facebook.com/ksfynews/videos/422447865041221/

https://www.facebook.com/adam.eichacker.3/videos/2513417698705670/

https://www.facebook.com/mark.krumvieda/videos/2329428637105565/

https://www.keloland.com/news/local-news/mandatory-evacuation-in-montrose/

These are a few pictures that are taken by others