Wet weather hampers storm recovery efforts in southwestern Wisconsin

Daily Reporter (Milwaukee), Jun 13, 2008 by Paul Snyder

Southwestern Wisconsin is itching to start rebuilding after last weekend's storms, but Mother Nature isn't cooperating.

The region came under more rainfall Thursday, postponing some initial cleanup efforts.

"We'd hoped to start getting stuff together today, but it's all dependent on the weather," said Marty Krueger, chairman of the Sauk County Board of Supervisors. "We're still dealing with the problems, but we're not able to get into recovery mode."

Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived in Wisconsin on Wednesday to begin preliminary assessments. Phil Clark, FEMA's inter-governmental field affairs manager in Washington D.C. is heading up the external affairs team in Wisconsin, and said it could be a few days before a formal request is made for federal monetary assistance.

"The first step is to find out what's out there," Clark said. "This is not the inspection that determines how much financial help Wisconsin will be getting. We'll do our initial work and then it's on the governor to make a formal request."

Clark said things won't be made to wait too long, though.

"I've been doing this 12 years, and I don't think there's been any disaster where someone's said, 'This can wait,'" he said.

For this week at least affected businesses and residents are making do.

The La Valle Telephone Cooperative, based near the Baraboo and Lake Delton areas, flooded with 30 inches of water Sunday night. This week, it's running operations out of Ironton-La Valle Elementary School. Important documents are spread out across the school's floors, slowly drying out.

"The water literally came right up to the edge of our desks," said Joyce Johnson, a billing administrator with the company. "We had guys in there Sunday night lifting all the bottom drawers and some of the important files up, but once the water got above their knees, they just had to get out."

Johnson did not know exactly how much damage had been done, but she said some computers were lost along with wooden furniture, and the walls and windows of the year-old office will need significant cleaning if not complete remodeling.

"On Monday, there was nothing we could do," she said. "We just watched all our stuff float by."

Krueger said while most media attention has gone to Lake Delton and Baraboo, all of Sauk County took a hard hit from the storms.

"This is a county-wide disaster," he said. "Every town, village and city here was affected on an equally catastrophic level."

So much so, he said, that emergency medical services teams from five other counties came to Sauk to help. It gave residents there a positive mindset, he said, in comparison to what some are feeling in other parts of the state.

Gays Mills, which took a hard hit during storms in August wasn't able to recover before last weekend's storms arrived, and village and county officials noted an overwhelming sense of discouragement there.

The village awaits FEMA's assessment and then will make a decision whether to clean up or disband the community.

But until those judgments are made, communities all over the state are slowly starting recovery efforts -- when the weather allows.

"I think the state of mind here is excellent considering what we've gone through," Krueger said. "There is a strong sense of cooperation to get through this and get the job done."