The Hancock-Henderson Quill, Inc.
Casey Sells age 7 with her mother Bobby Stricklend of Heapsville looks through binoculars Sunday afternoon to see if the water is off the Carman blacktop so they can return to their home.
Bobby said she and boyfriend Rick Sells parked a Jeep Cherokee and a big pleasure cruiser by the mail boxes at their turn-off and was told they would be safe but the levee broke and they found the boat in a field and her Jeep covered in water. Her home is on stilts but received 1 inch of water in the pump room she said. They are staying in Oquawka. "Thank goodness for friends," she said.
The roar and force of a broken levee is very powerful as this one shown near Carthage Lake.
-photos by Susan Coers, IEMA Region 2 Coordinator, OPS of Dixon and Tony Newton, DNR, Site Supervisor Big River State Forest, of Keithsburg.
A second spreader waits at the Gladstone track to be filled as BNSF work around the clock to get their railway back into operation. -Quill Photo by Dessa Rodeffer
A BNFS engine and spreader sits at the Gladstone crossing Monday as it is being loaded with gravel and sand that railroad workers are using to close up a huge 1200 foot gap washed out by a levee breach on June 17th. The sink hole has spots 30-40 feet deep. Working 24-hours a day, and coming from Chicago to Texas, officials were closing the gap by today and plan to text the track with some coal cars and then putting it back into service Thursday.
-photos by Dessa Rodeffer, Quill Publisher/Owner
West of Twomeys' elevators in Gladstone, workers line the flooded fields where boats are launched. A lone railway truck is on his way to a flooded track.
-Quill Photo by Dessa Rodeffer
On the north side of the railroad in Gladstone, truckers travel up and down the Twomey road hauling rock and sand to various spots as workers make the proper mix of gravel and sand and while others load the many cars on the spreader.
-photos by Susan Coers, IEMA Region 2 Coordinator, OPS of Dixon
Frontier officials offer a free meal to customers who lost power, commissioners, workers, and anyone helping out on Monday noon at Gladstone's Happy Rock park. - by Dessa Rodeffer
Workers for BNSF are building the railroad back by moving gravel and pushing it into the flood waters non-stop as workers on the other side are busy repairing track, ties and rails.
-photos by Susan Coers, IEMA Region 2 Coordinator, OPS of Dixon
and Tony Newton, DNR, Site Supervisor Big River State Forest, of Keithsburg.
As the spreader full of rock and gravel, is backed in, workers manually open each hopper allowing gravel to fall onto a conveyer belt and it is shot over the front of workers who in turn, flatten it and push it forward, creating the road. -photos by Susan Coers, IEMA Region 2 Coordinator, OPS of Dixon and Tony Newton, DNR, Site Supervisor Big River State Forest, of Keithsburg.
The gap that has caused BNSF Railway Co. to re-route trains since the June 17 flood in Henderson County was closed up Tuesday and plans to be operational by Thursday, said David Hestermann BNSF VP of Houston, Texas