VIENNA, ILLINOIS – At the end of a flooded apartment complex driveway, two young children push around wooden pallets they carried down to the water’s edge in their rain boots and coats. A bursting Little Cache Creek dispersed nearly 2 feet of water onto Locust Street.
Between 5 and 9 inches of rain fell on Vienna throughout the four-day-long stretch of storms according to the National Weather Service in Paducah.
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Just up the drive, Courtney Evetts waited inside as her kids made the most of the weather under cloudy skies. The flooding trapped a parking lot full of cars, leaving many residents at the apartment complex, including Evetts, stuck without transportation until the water rescinded.
“It’s not flooded this bad since I’ve lived in here,” Evetts said.
Flooding was expected for the residents of Vienna, and an extensive amount of preparation by the city helped mitigate the damages. Mayor Steve Penrod said when the city heard of the forecast, preemptive measures were taken to minimize the flooding. High schoolers volunteered to help fill sandbags, which were placed at businesses that had a higher risk of being impacted by the excessive rainfall.
The preparations and sandbags seemingly paid off for the community as there were no damages to businesses that he knew of and no water rescues or injuries were reported, he said on Sunday.
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Penrod, who is now 68 years old, can recall when the town flooded so much the water went over Illinois 146 near the city park. While this storm did not wash away 146, it flooded over U.S 45, putting this amongst the top two highest floods in Penrod’s memory.
Vienna has dealt with the water time and time again – Penrod said when he was in grade school, the city built watershed lakes north of Vienna to capture some of the excess water before it washed out the town, which has lessened the floods, he said, having not seen a severe flood in many years since.
The mayor said he heard from several residents – not with concern about flooding or even the Wednesday tornado warnings – but inquiring how the community could lean on one another.
“A lot of people were calling to say, ‘How can I help? Can I help fill sandbags? Where are they doing it at?’ People want to volunteer,” Penrod said. “The community really came together to prepare for this.”
Vienna High School was set to host prom on Saturday, April 5. However, students now have to save their tuxedos and dresses for Thursday, April 10.
Joshua Stafford, the Vienna superintendent, said that the tough decision to postpone the dance came after heavy evaluation and ultimately prioritizing the students’ safety.
The school was not short of activity without the prom, as the building became a safety shelter for many residents from the storms. A group of firefighters from Utah who were traveling through Johnson County on the interstate had sheltered in place at Vienna High School after they needed a place to take refuge from the Wednesday storms temporarily.
The storms were steady throughout the weekend. By Sunday, April 6 the floodwater had lowered by nearly a foot, but certain places like parking lots and baseball fields were still submerged.
“We did have our city park, it’s low anyways, but we had an excessive amount of water in it,” Penrod said. “Like the city park bathrooms had about 3 foot of water in them. So we’ll have a clean up to do on those when the water goes down.”
While the four-day-long weather trends flooded the city park and submerged the Vienna baseball fields, it’s not the worst residents have seen. Stafford remembered times where the water crept its way up to the four-way stop in the middle of town.
“The amount of floodwater we got this time is pretty indicative of something you’re going to see every five to 10 years in our community,” Stafford said.
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