Update from Clarksville
The river to going down slowly. Theres about 2 feet left on the main sand bag levee wall.
Many of you have volunteered to help clean up and the offers are much appreciated. We are in a strange lull right now. While the town is a mess - mud everywhere, rotting vegetation, sand bags galore etc. - the river is too high to take down the walls and most residents still have standing water in the basements. The sewer system is not up and running yet (we have dozens of portapotties all over town) and the storm drains in town are full of sand. In addition we are waiting for instructions from DNR and FEMA on how to dispose of the bags and sand. But, as I mentioned above, we are not ready to dispose of the bags yet anyway.
Because of the situation there is really not much for volunteers to do now. We have a few showing up from time to time but we have to tell them we are not quite ready for their help.
There is a core group of us managing the issues for the city but that is all under control.
If people ask you how they can help us I think the best approach right now is to take their names and phone numbers and tell them we will call when the clean up effort gets organized. If they just show up to help now I think they are going to be frustrated.
Clarksville got a lot of publicity and I think what we did was amazing. But, what we need to remember is that we are the lucky ones. Very few people have sustained major damage and we had only a few very minor injuries. 90% of our problems are clean up. Communities in Iowa and to the South of us on Hwy 79 are the ones really devastated.
