Downpour Of Rain Leads To Water Rescues, Road Closures

Those who went to yesterday's Mizzou game will tell you the weather was not pretty at all. The cold, freezing, torrential rain whipping at their faces and their entire outfits drenched in water was probably a very unpleasant experience. It didn't help either that Mizzou lost....

Columbia has gotten over five inches of rain since yesterday morning and it just keeps on coming. The rain isn't only causing problems for students, but the rest of Columbia as well. Before I headed into KBIA yesterday at 9 a.m., I saw that the Boone County Fire Department had been out making water rescues. So walah! My other stories had been taken, so this was it! Some stories are just as simple as that.

I spoke with the Boone County Fire District Division Chief, Boone County Public Works Maintenance Operations Manager, and a Supervisor for the 911 center at Columbia's Emergency Management Department about the rescues and road closures.

Click here to hear my story, click here to read the story on KBIA's website or read the text below. Much of the story did get cut to air (such as the strict numbers, details of road closures, how to prevent yourself from getting stuck in water, why exactly the water rescues happened ect. too much to fit into a reader) and quotes were extremely poor. I had other quotes talking about how long it would take to clean up, but another quote was used instead. I didn't really get any significant information from them that I couldn't write out myself making it tough to find a good quote. Almost a waste of already limited time if you ask me:

________________________________________________

Pouring rain throughout the day is causing a challenge for a number of Boone County drivers. Fire District Division Chief Gale Blomenkamp says the fire department responded to four water rescues before sunrise. The Boone County Public Works department was out closing roads as well. Maintenance operations manager Chip Estabrooks says the majority of the roads are by creeks and typically aren’t used by a large number of drivers. Officials closed more than a dozen roads throughout the day. Estabrooks says because some roads were built more than a century ago it would be hard to prevent flooding.

“We have to be really careful about building up these areas. It’s quite a process for the engineering department to design roads through low lying flood plain areas," Estabrooks says.

A flash flood warning remains in effect for Boone County until 6 p.m. tonight.

**********************************************

A slightly different version to use of the 6 p.m. newscast:

The Boone County Public Works Department is staying busy closing roads. Officials closed more than a dozen roads throughout the day. Boone County Maintenance operations manager Chip Estabrooks says the majority of the roads closed are by creeks and typically aren’t used by a large number of drivers. The county not only faced issues with flooded roads, but drivers who tried to make it across them. Boone County Fire District Division Chief Gale Blomenkamp says the fire department responded to four water rescues before sunrise… the most significant rescue happened when a man’s vehicle hydroplaned on the roadway.

“His vehicle went off the side of the road into the ditch, started being swept away by water into the creek and he was able to escape the vehicle and self rescue into a tree and that’s where we found the victim and was able to get him out of there," Blomenkamp says.

A flash flood warning remains in effect for Boone County until 6 p.m. tonight.

________________________________________________

*Picture taken from Flickr.com