The roar of the Missouri flowing through the 14 floodgates spanning the shared Nebraska and South Dakota border was a hungry lion waiting to pounce. Soon the nation’s longest river would attack Nebraska with one of the worst floods in its history.

(This story first appeared in the May/June 2012 issue of Nebraska Life Magazine.)

TORRENTIAL RAINS in the upper Missouri River Basin in May 2011 stressed all five main stream dams upriver of Yankton’s Gavins Point, leaving the hydroelectric structure that backs up Lewis and Clark Lake as the last line of defense against downstream deluges.

Public outcry and political pressure following major floods in the 1940s led to the creation of the dam network. The dams: Fort Peck near Glasgow, Mont., Garrison in central North Dakota, and Oahe, Big Bend, Fort Randall, and Gavins Point, all in South Dakota, were installed as flood controls as authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1944. Other benefits of the project include improved navigation, hydroelectric generation, recreational opportunities and irrigation. There are 15 dams in total on the Missouri, and nearly 100 more on its tributaries. The unforgiving Missouri River, as if offended by the attempted taming of its flows, has been rising up ever since.

Historic floods raged in 1881, 1943 and 1952. Gavins Point Dam was completed in 1957, and the rest of the upstream dams were all finished by the early 1960s. Still, heavy floods took their toll along the Missouri River in Nebraska in 1967, 1978 and 1993, with lesser, more localized floods occurring even more often. From its beginnings in the mountains of Montana, to where it joins the Mississippi north of St. Louis 2,341 miles later, the Missouri River brings life to the river valley. And on occasion, it dramatically changes the valley.

Up and down the Missouri River, the 2011 flooding caused more than $2 billion in damages, including 4,000 flooded homes, and resulted in five deaths. In Nebraska, water flowed across Highway 2 at Nebraska City all summer long. Three miles of Interstate 680 between Omaha and Interstate 29 near Council Bluffs, Iowa, was destroyed. And from Montana to Nebraska, $514 million worth of repairs are being made to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers levees, dams and other floodcontrol structures. By the time everything is cleaned up in 2012, the total cost to Eppley Airfield will top $22 million.

Devastation. That one word sums up the months-long Missouri River flood of 2011 for the people who experienced it: the business owners who lost their shops, restaurants, and factories, employees who lost livelihoods, and residents who lost their homes. As soon as the indiscriminate waters retreated, the victims set to work rebuilding both lives and buildings. Some relocated to begin anew, far from the muddy grasp of the monstrous Missouri River. Others stayed put, almost challenging the river to a second round.

With its legendary currents pulled back within its banks, for most, the flood of 2011 is over. But for those suffering through financial setbacks that will take years to recover from, and the victims who bare scars both physical and emotional, the great flood rages on. And as rising temperatures cause winter snowpack to melt hundreds of miles upstream in the Rockies, and spring rains begin to fall, a flood of memories begin to fill the minds of Nebraskans who lived through the Great Flood of 2011.

Churchill moved some of the belongings, and then arranged for their housing applications to be filed for the dormitory. By the weekend, her husband, and their children, Katy, 6, and Nikita, 7, all pitched in to move out residents.

City Administrator Rod Storm said preparations and repairs from the flood have cost Blair about $5 million, but after he saw the river in all its fury, he is probably amazed it was not millions more. Storm was left thunderstruck by a day in mid-June when he stood on the flood protection berms.

“The winds were gusting near 30 mph, creating 3-foot waves,” Storm recalled. “I felt like I was standing on the shores of Lake Michigan.”

Although it was a summer these riverside residents would like to forget, Green says many of the kids have fun memories of life on campus.

“They actually had a blast,” Green said. “The view from a child’s eyes, even in the midst of disaster and loss is always positive about the future.”

Thanks to the efforts of many dedicated residents, hope is once again flowing in Blair like the happy dreams of a child.

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It’s just something you’ve never seen in your life. You try to get to the closest spot of your land and you’re standing at the edge of the water but it’s still a half mile to your farm. It’s just virtually like an inland sea. You can see pictures on TV, or be in a plane flying over it, but nothing compares to standing there. You just stand there and wonder: How in the hell can we have this much water here? I guess the river gave us our own water park last summer.

Our family’s been farming for generations and we’ve had these 300 acres on the river bottom near Fort Calhoun for about 48 years. I’m 54 years old and I’ve been trying to pull some earnings out of this soil since I was seven. It’s fertile land and about a mile off the Missouri River proper, but for four month it was filled with water 8 to 12 feet deep. Still, we were luckier than most. I have neighbors who have anywhere from 2 to 10 feet of silt over hundreds of acres. Our land wasn’t left with nearly as much silt, and we brought heavy machinery in and spread it over several acres.

When the water receded, along with the sand, silt, and mud, I found decks off houses, large propane tanks, anything that can float. But I also knew I would find zero bushels to harvest, and because I wasn’t able to plant all the corn and soybeans, the value of my crop insurance was cut nearly in half, and my real estate taxes increased even though I didn’t get any revenue. How would you like to go out and look at your farm completely under water and you can’t see one square foot of dirt and then have your valuation in the last two years go up a couple hundred thousand dollars? You just have to roll with the punches and realize a year of your life went by where you have virtually no income off that investment.

We had an abnormally mild winter and were able to rebuild our land well into January. Our fields are ready to plant, but it’s a mystery if the corn and soybeans will return. In our family’s history of owning land on the river bottom we’ve never experienced an extended period of water like this. So there are great concerns about the life of the soil.

America’s become a country of people pointing the finger and laying the blame instead of asking what can I do to make it better. I’m a person of faith, and you don’t have to look very far to see a neighbor, a friend, or a stranger who has something that’s more challenging and worse than your situation. You just got to stay upbeat and take it a day at a time, man.

And as far as the river goes, you always respect the old gal.

Slippery Slope of Levee Patrol - OMAHA

When she started with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 18 years ago, Teresa Reinig never imagined waging a battle against a raging Missouri River. But that battle was unleashed after the river was rushing 60,000 cuboc feet per second (cfs) greater then Niagara Falls, and was cresting 10 feet over flood stage in many places. Reinig started out as a geologist. But like last year’s water rising, Reinig
rose through the Army Corps ranks. She’s a project manager now, and at times, that puts her right in the path of both nature’s fury, and that of the public.

The Papillion resident grew up on a farm near Panama, Iowa, and has vivid memories of the Nishnabotna River filling her family’s basement with a dirty deluge during the flood of 1972. “I know how devastating that was for the local farmers,” Reinig said. “Those things stay with you. It left a lasting impression on me.” That personal experience gives her an important perspective when working between other government agencies, municipalities, and the public.

One evening she and two workers patrolled the north levee of the Omaha Flood Protection Project as darkness quickly approached. Reinig lost her footing and plunged down the rain-soaked levee and into the swollen Missouri. By the time her co-workers realized what had happened, Reinig, who was wearing her government issue life-vest, was now muddy and wet and had pulled herself from the river’s grasp. Injury and tragedy narrowly averted, the team continued to check the rest of the 9.3 mile-long earthen levy.

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Sky High Waters - OMAHA

For people dropping into Omaha briefly via Eppley Airfield, the merciless Missouri River flood of 2011 was merely an inconvenience. But for the people on the ground there, this was the front line of a major battle to protect the airport.

Instead of taking the weekend off, the Omaha Airport Authority, over the Memorial Day holiday weekend began monitoring the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ reservoir-release data.

“Realizing what was in front of us, we knew we needed to act quick. Never in the history of the airport had we seen anything like this,” said Dave Roth, director of planning and engineering for the Omaha Airport Authority. “As the week progressed, we knew we needed to assemble a highimpact team.”

Roth put battle skills acquired as a captain with the U.S. Army’s 24th Infantry Division to use, and brought together seven contractors, Alvine Engineering, HDR, Hawkins Construction, Kiewit, Lamp Rynearson and Associates, Thiele Geotech, and URS Corp. They often had battled one another in the past for the same projects, but now they were a floodfighting super team, joining forces to save the airport that brings in passengers, and $745 million to Omaha’s metropolitan area each year.

The levy experts at Kiewit had experience in New Orleans with the Hurricane Katrina disaster, and they suggested bringing URS Corp. on board. “We brought the best in,” Roth said. “Together, this was probably the most competent, highly skilled group of professionals I’ve ever worked with.”

Dennis Anderson of Thiele Geotech shares a similar sentiment. “This was one of the most satisfying projects I’ve worked on in 20 years,” Anderson said. “Logos and egos were checked at the door, and everyone worked together as a team.” Anderson said the mobilization of these seven companies was akin to invading a small country. And in late July, it looked as if the river might thwart their protective efforts.

“Most of the time we were pretty confident that we would prevail,” Anderson said. “But there was a week or two there, sometime around July 22, while checking groundwater levels in 29 places, when the water was rising fast and everyone was concerned that this time Mother Nature just might win.”

Lamp Rynearson and Associates, has been working at Eppley Airfield for 15 years. When floodwaters crept to within 5 feet of the top of the levy surrounding the airport, the company had already shifted employees who had been working on a runway project, and were reinforcing the back side of the levies with a blanket of sand and gravel, repairing sinkholes, and gathering groundwater data. “It’s hard to land an airplane when your runway has fallen into a sinkhole,” said Dan Owens, vice president of Lamp Rynearson and Associates.

Owens acknowledges that the flood fight was an unprecedented team effort to keep floodwaters at bay, including the hard work of 20 of his own employees, but he saves a special salute for Hawkins. “Around here, when we see the guys from Hawkins Construction, we say ‘Hawkins Construction-you saved the airport.’ ”

Hawkins Construction is well known to Omaha residents. The company often has as many as 20 highway projects ongoing in the city at any given time, and they range from $1 million to $70 million. And since the 1980s, Hawkins has performed more than $200 million worth of projects at Eppley. Nick Gable was on the ground there, with soaked boots, coordinating at the high point, leading 110 employees on a large but simple mission: protect the airport’s assets so the airport can maintain normal operations.

“We didn’t ever know what the next day had in store for us, but we attacked it.” Gable said. “We threw just about everything we had at it, and never thought we were ready to sink.”

On a four-wheeler riding along the top of a levy, Tom Swanek patrolled the airport perimeter, inspecting some of the 400,000 sandbags that Hawkins Construction deployed against the mother of all floods. Swanek started his career with the Omaha Airport Authority at the young age of 21. And in the 35 years since, he's never seen a flood like the Great Flood of 2011. The field maintenance manager responsible for the airfield is used to moving snow, mowing and performing electrical work. But battling a force of nature like the Missouri River didn't come naturally for Swanek.

Groundwater rising from under the airfield, not the actual river itself, was Swanek's main concern. "We'd fill up one sandboil, and another one would pop up somewhere else," Swanek said. "But we protected all of the assets."

Sky High Waters - OMAHA

Instead of taking the weekend off, the Omaha Airport Authority, over the Memorial Day holiday weekend began monitoring the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ reservoir-release data.

“We didn’t ever know what the next day had in store for us, but we attacked it.” Gable said. “We threw just about everything we had at it, and never thought we were ready to sink.”

As he put on mile after mile patrolling Eppley on his trusty four-wheeler, and threw a beach's worth of sandbags, there were times that Swanek wondered if it would work. "We watched the water come up. And there were days that were questionable. But we were vigilant. I thought that as long as the levy held, we could make it through. And, we did."

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Coast Guard Rescues Itself - OMAHA

In its nearly 220 years of existence, the U.S. Coast Guard has performed many rescue missions on the high seas, but when the highest seas of the Missouri River came rolling in on Omaha, the 17-member crew of the Cutter Gasconade had just 10 days to save themselves. The floodwaters were coming, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had packed up their trucks and headed for the exits. If these guys took the cutter down river, their headquarters risked being flooded out, and the Coast Guard would face several million dollars in repairs.

They decided not to abandon ship. All they needed during this 10-day struggle was 18 water pumps running 24-7, and about 900 tons of sand, and a crew that refused to quit. Mission accomplished.

“We were pretty much on our own,” said the crew’s leader, Master Chief Dean Smith, a native of Eagle, Colo., who now resides in Bellevue with his wife and three children. “I was a little bit worried when I saw the Army Corps was just loading everything into semi trucks and leaving. That kind of made me question
the decision we were making.”

But soon help was on the way, Iowa Coast Guard members, retirees from the Coast Guard Auxiliary and Omaha prison inmates all helped the crew load 45,000 sandbags and build a 6-foot-high wall all around their building. Smith said the critical move came when one of the younger members of the crew suggested increasing the wall on the river’s side to 7 feet high.

“When everything shook out at the end we were only within probably less than 2 inches from overtopping,” Smith said. “So if we had made it the original height, the water would have overtopped and we would have lost our building.”

Although the cutter patrols 500 miles of the Missouri and has been stationed in Omaha since the ship was commissioned in 1964, their mission is a mystery to much of Nebraska, and even the Coast Guard. “There’s a lot of people who are in the Coast Guard that don’t even know there’s an inland fleet,” Smith said.

Dustin Roll is the only Nebraskan native helping patrol his state’s shores. He grew up in West Omaha, and a few months out of high school he signed up in October of 2000 after a strange twist of fate. “One my best buddies had an appointment and I went down with him because he didn’t want to go alone,” Roll said. “I was the one who ended up joining.”

Roll, who has worked his way up to the middle ranks of E5 second class petty officer, said the Gasconade crew came up with innovative tactics to turn back the flood. They dug trenches to aid deeper pumping and slowed water flowing up toilets with hemp-fiber rags. The crew has been honored for its efforts with a Meritorious Unit Commendation.

“It was getting a little hairy here and there at certain points,” Roll said. “The more we worked together as a team, we came up with better ideas. We saved the Coast Guard a lot of money by saving our building.”

But the biggest honor for Roll was after nearly a decade of service he was able to return to his hometown in 2010 for a 3-year tour.

“It was my dreamboat to get stationed back here,” he said.

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Reaching Out Across the River - NEBRASKA CITY

While most of Nebraska City rested on higher ground above the merciless Missouri, its residents never lost touch with their bond to Iowans across the river.

“We consider the people on that side of the river part of Nebraska City,” said Rebecca Turner, Nebraska City’s executive director of tourism and commerce. “It’s the Nebraska City on the other side of the river.”

The losses of many Iowa farmers from Nebraska City’s second city hit home. When the bridge across Highway 2 was shut down, it not only blocked the border crossings of neighborly shoppers, but it suddenly left over a 1,000 Iowan workers facing 2-hour commutes to Nebraska City’s biggest employers, Elster American Meter and Cargill Meat Solutions.

But Nebraska City didn’t stay up on its hill. Hundreds of helping hands reached down across the river, donating food and finding housing for commuting workers. Volunteers watched the levees for holes caused by badgers and deer, while Cargill and Elster paid for round-the-clock marathon bus trips for its employees.

“You can imagine what kind of financial impact that would have had on the employees if they had to pay the gas for trips like that day and night,” said City Administrator Joseph Johnson.

At Region V Services, the Nebraska City agency that provides job training and other services for the region’s developmentally disabled, hundreds of sandwiches and kind thoughts were delivered to Hamburg, the Iowa community where one of Region V’s staffers lives.

“People in services and staff made over 300 sandwiches and then loaded them and the other food items into a van and pickup and headed out,” said Karen S. Ohnmacht of Region V Services. “Everywhere we stopped in Percival and Hamburg the people were so grateful. Many commented that they were in such a hurry

to get packed and moved, eating had just slipped their minds.”

Ohnmacht said that a few days later, the Region V brigade made another 300 plus sandwiches and again delivered them along with water to Hamburg volunteers who were filling sandbags. They also helped a Percival woman move from her farmhouse to stay with relatives in Nebraska City.

“I’ve lived in a lot of small communities all over the Midwest and I’ve never found a more tenacious bunch of people,” Turner said. “People who were not afraid of what they were going to face and were willing to roll up their sleeves and dive in. It’s the hardest-working town I’ve ever been in.”

Nebraska City again stepped up to the plate when they served weekly dinners at the First Presbyterian Church to dozens of Iowa workers displaced from their homes. The idea was the brainchild of Stephanie Shrader, a dedicated church member who also happens to be the executive director of Nebraska City Area Economic Development. While the Iowans were treated to tasty meals served up by volunteers, they also got feedback at the gatherings from the American Red Cross, the Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA.

“Nebraska City is a great community with compassionate individuals and strong business people who work hard to weather difficult situations,” Shrader said.

That’s how they roll in Nebraska’s namesake city. They all stick together in all kinds of weather.

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The Ultimate Power Struggle - BROWNVILLE

When Nebraska was flooded with threats to its power grid one of the guys who was on the front lines was Scott Walz, who works for Nebraska Public Power District, trouble-shooting concerns over highvoltage towers and even the mother of all electrical generators, Cooper Nuclear Station. But Scott never felt powerless despite the challenges.

“I just Google everything,” joked Walz. Still, there had to be electrifying moments when Walz was called in to make sure the Cooper nuclear power plant near Brownville withstood any terror from the Missouri River.

“I was concerned about the flooding and about the safety of the plant,” Walz said. “The actual job of doing the sandbagging was peanuts. We have a lot of heavy equipment and we’ve got good people.

“But our concern was definitely if that nuclear plant would have flooded, we’d be in the same boat as Omaha Public Power District is right now,” said Walz, referring to the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Generating Station, which remains shut down after the plant was surrounded by floodwaters.

“If we lose 800 megawatts out of Cooper Nuclear Station we don’t have any other resources to replace it,” said Mark Becker, media relations specialist for NPPD, who stressed that a Cooper shutdown would have dramatically affected ratepayers. “We would have to go out and buy into the market.”

Hundreds of miles to the north in South Sioux City, customers’ power concerns were being handled by Doug Klug, who more than two decades ago went to line school in Norfolk with Walz. In his role as a distributions superintendent, he made sure the city’s waste-water sewage plant kept operating, and he also had to keep the power flowing for vital shopping services like Wal-Mart. Simultaneously, he was evacuating from his own home in Dakota Dunes, S.D.

“It’s a year I’d like to forget,” Klug said.

But Klug never forgot to stress safety for his crews when shutting down electrical systems in flood conditions.

“Water and electric lines do not mix,” he said.

And Klug will also never forget that phone call from South Sioux City he made to his buddy Walz down by the riverside near the Marina Inn.

“I remember calling him and telling him and I’d just seen probably a 150-footby-140-foot deck off a house floating down the middle of the river.”

It was another power trip from this arrogant river, but some dedicated workers refused to back down.

The Lost Season - BROWNVILLE

by Jane Smith (co-owner of River Inn and Spirit of Brownville cruise)

For decades the river has been our business partner. It’s where guests come to relax in our 18 rooms floating gently on the River Inn, and for dinner cruises on our 150-passenger Spirit of Brownville. My husband Randel and I have been doing this for 42 years, and after 42 years I guess you just become a little philosophical. The river can be beautiful and it can be your friend, and then it can be sheer terror.

We’ve had floods before, but in two weeks they would go down and then you would clean up the mess and start over again. But this lasted all summer, from Memorial Day through the middle of September.

The only way to get to our boat on the river is in a boat. We did run a few cruises up the river, but eventually the water went over the big levee there, and the Coast Guard shut all boating down.

It was awful. Almost every weekend we had a wedding scheduled, and all those weddings had to be canceled, including one with 250 guests. Fortunately, our own home is on a very high hill away from flooding, but it was a lost season for many
Main Street businesses, including our own bookstore and cafe, the Brownville Lyceum. When the Nebraska City Bridge shut down for so long it really hampered access. You couldn’t go east, or west.

Everyone in our lovely community pulled together, and helped make the bad things better. Randel and I would take the motor boat down each day to our inn to start the generator and keep air moving so the place didn’t get rusty or moldy. Then the river got so high that the steamboat museum floated off its concrete cradle, so we took the boat over there every day to make sure it stayed connected to its piers.

The river left some places in 6 feet of sand, so our son, James, helped Riverside Park’s campground try to clear out the sand, and trees that fell over. Because the water stayed high for so long the ground just became kind of like oatmeal. There was nothing for the tree range to cling to and they just fell over.

This year, our weddings are booked again as well as some family reunions. I suppose maybe I’m kind of optimistic. I have a saying on my desk that says life is 10 percent what happened to you and 90 percent how you deal with what happened to you. We are just fine. So far, knock on wood, the river is behaving itself very well.

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Platte River Flood

EASTERN NEBRASKA wasn't the only part of the state to suffer from epic floods in 2011. From March through October, the North and South Platte rivers in Western Nebraska resisted the trite adage that its typically placid flows are merely an inch deep.

Reservoirs upstream in Wyoming were holding 40 percent more water than normal when spring snow melt and rain combined and converged on the Platte River Valley. To make room for the coming surge, officials from Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District had no choice but to open the floodgates, releasing water from Lake McConaughy, Nebraska's largest lake, driving people and their posessions to higher ground.

When the water began rising at Scottsbluff, Gering, and Terrytown, it rose 3 feet in just five days. And local residents weren't the only ones
howling. More than 180 animals at the Riverside Discovery Center, formerly the Riverside Zoo, sensed the rising tide. Zoo staff and volunteers worked hard to relocate them all before the flood could sweep them toward North Platte, or release them into local neighborhoods. Lions, and chimps, and bison – Oh my!

All of the zoo's animals survived the flooding, but closure of the facility for six weeks during what is usually its busiest time of year hurt to the tune of more than $30,000 in lost admission charges, not to mention the cancellation of Riverside's popular summer camps.

"But the community really came together to support us after the flood," said Anne James, the center's executive director. Supporters donated building materials, equipment and labor. Backhoes were loaned to the zoo at no cost, as were refrigeration units and other needed supplies. "One family even took all of the animals from our petting zoo home, took great care of them, and fed them for six weeks – and didn't charge us anything," James said. Several enclosures were safe from the tide, but some large animals were moved to zoo buildings on higher ground, while caring zoo staff squirreled the smaller critters away to their own homes until waters receded.

Not letting the flood damage dampen their hopes for the future, the Riverside Discovery Center recently broke ground on a new 17,000-square-foot combination natural history museum, zoo, event center and children's museum.

Just downstream from the zoo, water lapped mere inches away from people on their way to work and school as the Platte reached toward the bottom of the Highway 71 bridge. When viewed from atop Scotts Bluff National Monument, the Platte looked as if it was a mile wide. How long would the road remain dry? Would commuters be able to make it to work tomorrow? Anyone glancing east of the bridge could see water pooling, and it turned Terry's Lake into an inland sea. And in Terrytown, water crept steadily toward a trailer court near the intersection of Terry Boulevard and Stable Club Drive.

Meetings were held at Terrytown's Carpenter Center, and residents of the lowlying area were advised to begin thinking about moving their belongings to higher ground and figuring out where they were going to live. Town officials already had the Red Cross ready to spring into action, and the Nebraska Public Power District was ready to switch off the power in the event that the trailer court community was inundated.

"Our dike held the water back," said Terrytown Mayor Ken Greenwalt. In what was either a fluke of nature, or the result of the desperate prayers of Terrytown residents, unbelievably, the floodwaters flowed under the trailer court, and into Terry's Lake.

"Yeah, it was miracle," Greenwalt said. "But we were ready. Terrytown, Scottsbluff, and Gering – we were all ready for it. And now we're better prepared for when, not if, it happens again."

Julie Morrison was fearful for her Terrytown neighbors. "As we watched the water rise every day, I was afraid they were going to get washed away," Morrison said. "If the levy would have broke, they would have had no chance." Morrison's home is on higher ground than those in that Terrytown trailer court, but her business, Julie's Antiques in Gering, still suffered flood damage. The economic variety.

"We're an agricultural community, and when farmers get nervous about their fields being flooded, they aren't buying antiques, or much of anything else either," Morrison said. "And all of the talk of the streets being closed down between Scottsbluff and Gering, and that the 21st Street bridge was going to fail, had tourists nervous, too."

The streets stayed open and the bridge held up, but Morrison's busiest time of year was water under the bridge for 2011. She's optimistic that 2012 will be better. "But there's still a lot of snow left up in the mountains," Morrison said.

As the deluge continued to scour downstream, it became a mass of water, sand, trash, grass and mud. In Lincoln County, approximately 10,000 acres of pastures, grassland and hay fields were flooded, and production for most of that ground was lost for the year. Bruce Solko, director for the Farm Service Agency's Lincoln County office in North Platte says most farmers avoided disaster, "Luckily, this was moving water,” he said. “Most of the flooded pasture didn't end up silted in, and the grass should be normal this year. As long as we don't experience any more flooding."

Workers brought in from Omaha filled sandbags near the North Platte Airport. More than 26,000 sandbags into their own mission, Michael Ramirez, a contractor with Navarro Enterprise Construction Inc., showed his pride in what he and the rest of the crew were doing, "All of us are from Omaha, but we're helping to save North Platte."

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North Platte became the front line in a battle that pitted man against nature. The thump-thump-thump of rotor blades from three Blackhawk helicopters could be heard across North Platte as the green machines hovered ominously over the city as National Guard troops outflanked the Platte's invasion through a breeched levee near a railroad bridge. The choppers relentlessly bombarded the river with 1-ton sandbags every 5 minutes, and after nearly 5 million pounds of these dirty bombs had been dropped, the 6-day war was finally won.

Channels were dug to drain water surrounding several airport buildings, and water was running across Highway 30. A natural gas station near the Lincoln Country Historical Museum was sandbagged to protect the town's supply. At Nebraskaland Days, following the kids sandcastle building contest, volunteers used the sand to fill 300 sandbags. The Buffalo Bill Ranch State Park lost much of its riverbank and was closed most of the summer. Not far away, the Platte flowed freely across North Platte's beloved Cody Park.

And on 40 green acres across the river from Cody Park, the floodwaters raged 15 inches deep for a month. And Dr. Gary Conell, a family practitioner in North Platte, needed a four-wheel-drive truck to get back and forth from home to work. The York-area native had things moved to higher ground before high water reached his belongings, but when the Platte reached his large Quonset, "I just opened the doors and let it go," Conell said. "Yes, the Platte River was flowing through that building."

"I've never seen anything like it before," Conell said. "But the river is really bottlenecked here at North Platte, and since the city built the dike, now more water is diverted onto my property. But, when you live on the river, well, some days you have a risk."

Conell thinks better planning could alleviate the damage to property owners along both the Missouri and the Platte.

"When there's 200 percent of normal snow upstream, somebody should think that sooner or later, that water is going to start flowing. And, the authorities, they're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. But you'd think we'd be sophisticated enough to open those dams and start releases earlier to avoid this. I'm sure we pay these people enough to manage the river better. But I'm sure it's more difficult than most people think."

Other than having to build up his driveway, replace his yard, and a little clean-up in the Quonset, the only other flood-related inconvenience Conell has endured is the current battle against the moss and cattails now growing in his yard. "That's no major problem," Conell said. "But one of my neighbors, he said 'I'm done,' and he left."

That neighbor across the river was Don Nicholson, and after 22 years on the river, he and his wife, Pauline, had seen many floods. And even though the home they were living in was a quarter-mile from the river's usual channel, they ended up
with a crawlspace full, and 12 inches of water inside their home. The carpet and walls in their garage and shop were destroyed, and so was their well and septic system. "We didn't lose much," Nicholson said. "But we just got tired of having to move everything every so often. So, we cut our losses and bought a small house here in North Platte.

"I miss living out there, but I don't miss wondering, how high is it gonna get this year?"

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(This story first appeared in the May/June 2012 issue of Nebraska Life Magazine.)

The Great Flood of 2011