It just kept getting louder, louder, and louder, and we started hearing the cracking of the trees as the water came through. I wasn't thinking of a dam breaking. I was just thinking a flash flood from sudden rain swell, but we were really shocked when we woke up and got outside, it was light, and saw what had really happened. |
It went right up the side of that bluff and just cleaned the top of it off. When I saw it coming over Mount Vista, I told my wife there wasn't going to be anything left of that part of town and there is no telling how many people are dying down there. |
The engineer from FEMA said this was the quickest recovery with such damage that he had ever seen. He expected it to take a year, but within three months, Van Buren had pretty much recovered from it. |