Southside Flooding (7-20-20)

Southside Flooding (7-20-20)

Water running down their street... and up into their homes.

A debris jam and heavy morning rain flooding entire neighborhoods.

Kq2's kilee thomas was there on the southside where residents say this is nothing they've ever seen before.

Monday morning's heavy rainfall has flooded the south end of st.

Joseph.

The rising waters completely taking over homes here on joseph street.

Resulting in families being water rescued and forced to evacuate.

"we woke up and water was running down the street.""this is my church right here and i was just worried.

Someone called that goes to the church that lives in this area and they said it's raining really hard, you better get down there."

A debris jam along contrary creek and an unexpected 5 inches of rain slamming southern parts of st.

Joseph leading to a major flood"we got a call on friday about logs piling up between here and jj.

We went down to where we could see and couldn't find anything.

Obviously, with this five inch rain they all congregated right here at marie.""anytime you get five inches of rain in a short period of time it's just hard to stop it,"the downpour knee high in some parts emergency personnel to perform water rescues families, babies and dogs stranded by the high waters"we got our dog and our child, but that was pretty much it."

"she was more worried about that dog than she was her house."

The flood waters destroying entire neighborhoods joseph fire department even pulling out their rescue boat.

"st.

Joseph fire department responded with their water rescue unit.

St.

Joe pd was down here, buchanan county sheriff's department, buchanan county's ems was down and we've helped some people out of their homes and transport them to a waiting city bus until a shelter can be opened up for them down here."

Residents devastated the water inch higher and higher up their neighbors' homes "my neighbor here is such a good neighbor.

He is going through it right now, he's got a lot of water over there."

"if it rains anymore, i don't know what's going to happen."

The city trying to find a place to house all those affected by the flooding.

"200 to 300 people live in the area and are probably affected by water in some way," hook said.

"it's really sad all these people got this mud and water in their homes and yards."the plan originally was to take people to green hills to get on a special route city bus... "they might bring some passengers to us to take them home."

But the city is now using the civic arena to temporarily house displaced residentsa rush of running water leaving a community scrabbling on what to do next "this is the first time we've had this.

This is the very first time."reporting in st.

Joseph, kilee thomas, kq2 news the civic arena is housing those 22 displaced residents for the day...the red cross is stepping to help find overnight lodging for those evacuated.

Still to come