Folks living in a small town in the southern part of Illinois were informed on Tuesday morning they needed to evacuate their homes immediately due to an imminent dam failure, local emergency responders said. Man, that’s a heck of a bad way to wake up in the morning, right?
Good morning, sir, I hope all is well. I regret to inform you that there’s a high probability that a dam is about to fail which will likely render you homeless within the next few hours. Have a blessed day.
Oof.
Here are more details on this nightmare scenario from USA Today:
A secondary dam in Nashville, Illinois failed Tuesday morning, Alex Haglund, a spokesperson with the Washington County Emergency Management Agency, told USA TODAY. The agency announced the update on Facebook, indicating the area around the secondary dam had been overtopped with flood waters.
“The cause of the dam failure was flash flooding due to extensive rains,” Haglund said in a statement given to USA TODAY.
Evacuations were taking place in the city in Washington County, about 55 miles southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. Haglund said 299 phones in the area received the evacuation order.
“The area evacuated is in a flood drainage path extended to the south and west from the reservoir,” Haglund remarked to the outlet. The agency first posted on Facebook early on Tuesday morning, informing residents that the “failure of the Nashville dam is imminent.”
“Please evacuate your home at this time. If you are in the grey box, you need evacuate now!” the post went on to state.
The agency also published a post on their social media accounts stating that a shelter was being set up for local residents on West Walnut Street in the city. It also revealed that “The Red Cross has been activated.”
The Nashville City Reservoir Dam was completed in 1935 and last inspected in 2021, according to USA TODAY’s dam database. Its latest condition was not immediately available.
Typically when we talk about disaster preparedness we do so on an individual level, discussing all of the materials a person might need in order to survival a horrific and sudden emergency or disaster. Where should you go, what you should have in your kits or cupboards.
However, it’s just as important for local communities and bigger cities and neighborhoods to have plans in place for what to do in a major flood situation, for fires, or other such emergencies. Sometimes it’s not possible to shelter in place at home and in that case everyone needs to know what they should do in cases such as the one faced by the people of Nashville, Illinois. Not having a set of instructions or policies in place for what to do in emergencies could lead to catastrophic loss of life.
We should be keeping the people of this community in our thoughts and prayers, along with looking for ways to act as the hands and feet of Jesus Christ to provide some help and relief for those who are impacted by this disaster.
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