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With Growing Hope: A Study of the August 2007 Kickapoo Flood in the Village of Gays Mills

By Laura Brown, Crawford County Community Development Educator

In rural areas as bucolic as the farming communities of southwest Wisconsin, planning for a disaster is often the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. It certainly was for me when in June 2007 I moved into an old quaint farmhouse on an apple orchard just above the village of Gays Mills. The "driftless" region, as this area of southwest Wisconsin is known, is characterized by unique rolling hills, coulees (valleys), and streambeds that were left untouched during the last glaciers. Crawford County is in the heart of the driftless region bounded by the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers and divided by the Kickapoo River. The village of Gays Mills, population 625, sits in a coulee along the Kickapoo River and is known for its ridge-top apple orchards and ample opportunities for outdoor exploration.  While residents of the area are accustomed to dealing with floods, (according to one resident this typically meant "sandbagging and drinking coffee together") no one anticipated that in August 2007 Gays Mills would be engulfed by over four feet of rushing river water resulting in the most destructive flood in the village’s recorded history.

From Saturday, August 18 through Sunday, August 19, 2007, southwestern Wisconsin received over twelve inches of rain causing extreme overland and river flooding along the Kickapoo River. The villages of Gays Mills and Soldiers Grove and nearby rural areas were most affected; at its peak the Kickapoo River at Gays Mills reached a crest of 19.79 feet or 6.79 feet above flood stage. According to County Sheriff Jerry Moran (as printed in the Crawford County Independent on August 23, 2007) "It's the worst flooding we’ve ever seen...worse than the 1978 flood for sure." The previous river peak record was set at 19.8 feet in 1978 and serious flooding had occurred in the area, on average, every 20 years or so. In a report of the August flooding event, the La Crosse National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration writes "When asked to provide a recurrence interval estimate for this event, an investigator should note the enormous gap between the 100-year 24-hour threshold (six inches), and the fifteen or more inches that fell during a 24-hour period on that ill-fated weekend." The report places the probability of the flood "considerably below" one percent and closer to a 1,000 year flood.

The Initial Response

At 2:30 am on Sunday morning the county emergency manager, Roger Martin, was contacted in response to flooding in Soldiers Grove, just northeast of Gays Mills along the Kickapoo River. The river rose quickly and by 7:00 a.m. on August 19, downtown Gays Mills was being evacuated and a state of emergency had been declared. Residents of the more than 75 flooded homes in the village were evacuated by boat and offered shelter at the fire station and a Red Cross shelter that had been established at a local school. Many county roads were blocked by floodwaters or mudslides.

In a recent conversation with Martin about the response effort I learned that the emergency management system is set up as a chain of command such that each level of command contacts the higher level only when capacity is overwhelmed; the local emergency manager contacts Wisconsin Emergency Management or the state patrol, and the state then contacts federal officials and the National Guard. By 5:00 p.m. on Sunday evening the National Guard was on call for deployment. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) did not open a facility in the village until August 11, 2007, eleven days after the disaster. Fortunately, local officials, public works staff and first responders had all been recently trained in NIMS, the National Incident Management System, a standardized response system that allows local agencies to coordinate through daily briefings and shared action plans. Thanks to a successful initial response, there were no injuries or fatalities.

While the full extent of the damage would not be known for weeks or months, Wisconsin Emergency Management released an estimate that in Crawford County alone about 225 homes were affected resulting in $4.8 million in damage to households and $3.6 million in damage to public infrastructure. Rural areas surrounding the Kickapoo suffered the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in crops, machinery, and livestock. Approximately 25 homes were completely destroyed and 50 were designated "substantially damaged," meaning the cost to repair the structure exceeded its fair market value by 50 percent or more. Upon repair or reconstruction, these structures would have to be elevated or otherwise flood-proofed to meet the minimum requirements of the National Flood Insurance Program.

Putting A Village Back Together

The initial emergency effort after the flood was largely coordinated by Wisconsin Emergency Management. Emergency managers and FEMA maintained a local office for several weeks encouraging residents to register for federal flood compensation. Once these organizations closed shop, village residents became suddenly responsible for coordinating the efforts of hundreds of remaining volunteers, managing truckloads of donated goods, and figuring out how to handle thousands of dollars of monetary donations to households. Within several weeks of the flood the Village Board designated a group of volunteers as an official "Flood Planning Committee" with the charge of making planning recommendations. Without much direction, the group struggled to handle the basic needs of residents dealing with "buy-out" and "mitigation" program deadlines, and the desire of many residents to start moving forward with a new vision for the village. A local non profit community development organization that had handled a large housing relocation project in Prairie du Chien in the 1970’s stepped in to provide technical assistance with buy-out and flood mitigation applications.

Apart from the official reports from Wisconsin Emergency Management, little documentation is available from the days and weeks after the flood. The local newspaper, the Crawford County Independent, continued to publish from an office outside the county but local libraries did not save paper issues and electronic copies of articles were saved inconsistently. In the early planning meetings, minutes were not taken since no one was given any clear mandate to lead and most local officials were taxed from the time and efforts of the initial response.

The seeming lack of coordination in those early weeks was understandable given that many volunteers were dealing with their own damaged homes and emotional trauma. But the flood also occurred at a difficult time for the village. The clerk had been out with a long term illness and the librarian had agreed to fill in with little time for training. When the flood occurred, the village office (and the interim clerk) became a hub of communication for information-hungry residents. Literally hundreds of individuals, as well as local, state and federal organizations such as the National Guard, Red Cross, Salvation Army, Department of Health and Family Services, Department of Natural Resources, the State Patrol, Americorps, Catholic Charities, Department of Corrections and, of course, FEMA, held meetings, assessed damages, and provided donations and services to local residents. This sometimes led to confusion and frustration. At one point, the interim clerk describes, "FEMA was giving out money so folks could make their homes ‘safe, sanitary, and secure’ but the DNR was telling people in substantially damaged structures that they could not occupy their homes." Another local official added "...there were too many agencies involved and people were confused about what they could and could not do. Homes would get 'red tagged’ as uninhabitable and no one would know who was issuing the tags or why. People became overwhelmed by the amount of information they were getting from these agencies and subsequently shut down to all of it."

The Long Road to Recovery

I attended many of the early meetings of the flood planning committee in Gays Mills but given my lack of expertise with their specific questions about housing relocation and flood mitigation, and with no clear request for leadership or specific information, Extension’s role was not immediately clear. Knowing that many of the businesses in town were damaged and would not get much response from FEMA I coordinated business counseling sessions with about 15 businesses and our local Small Business Development Center counselor. Since those early meetings the flood planning committee has divided itself into research groups on the topics of economic development, utilities, flood mitigation, alternative energy, and housing, and I have continued to provide the groups with educational resources on an as-needed basis.

Prior to the August 2007 flood, Gays Mills had adopted the County’s Hazard Mitigation Plan. (Adoption of a plan is a requirement for the National Flood Insurance Program that allows residents in flood prone areas to purchase insurance.) The plan contains only four sentences regarding "Flood Warning and Evacuation Plans for the Kickapoo River" all pertaining to the possibility of a dam breach on a creek north of Gays Mills with no mention of the downtown. The county is currently in the process of updating the plan.

In October, the community development agency working with the flood committee hired a professional facilitator to initiate a visioning process; what they hope will be the first step toward a comprehensive community plan. It was clear from the first visioning session, held February 23rd, that Gays Mills still has a very long road to tread in a process of recovery. Fortunately, the community is beginning to come to terms with the scope of the effort ahead. While the residents continue to sort through disagreement, confusion, uncertainty, and economic concerns, resident Kay Smiley expressed the hope for cooperation and healing: "As we plan to gather for a community visioning event, I hope we can also see beyond demographics and economic development to include healing and improved relationships, to a future where ‘the fathers hearts will be turned to the children and the children to their fathers,’ where anger and fear will not have a place…"

Flooding Prompts Village Relocation A massive flood event in 1978 resulted in a federally funded main street relocation and redevelopment effort in the Village of Soldiers Grove. Over four years, from 1978 to 1983, downtown Soldiers Grove was moved and transformed into "Solar Town" the nation’s first solar business district comprised of over twenty energy efficient, solar-panel powered businesses and public buildings. Many believe that this downtown redevelopment project spared Soldiers Grove residents and businesses from significant damage in the recent flood. For more information visit: Soldiers Grove Wisconsin, America's First Solar Village Rebuilding for the Future....A Guide to Sustainable Redevelopment for Disaster-Affected Communities

Aerial of downtown Soldiers Grove during a 1951 flood. Photo: Betty France.

Soldiers Grove in its new location along US Hwy 61, relocated to avoid flooding. Photo: Jerry Quebe.

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