Knee deep...and then some

Normally, the Roubidoux creek is just that-a quiet and scenic waterway that meanders its way around and through the city of Waynesville on it's way to the Gasconade River.  It serves as the backdrop for campgrounds, city parks and hiking trails.  It's a popular place to fish and in the summer months the shallow waters and lazy currents make it a possibly ideal place to take Legend swimming after work.  I haven't had the chance to do this yet and it certainly won't be any time soon.

This week the Roubidoux overflowed its banks and put downtown Waynesville underwater.  Tuesday, the clinic flooded.  It was not my day to work but reportedly there was enough water present to force them to shut down and spend the whole day mopping and cleaning. All things considered they were pretty lucky.  We did lose air conditioning to the kennel and some of our fence.

This is the creek bed behind the clinic looks like today (two days after it flooded into the clinic).  Usually it's dry or almost dry-right now it could sweep you away.

Downstream, the Gasconade wreaked havoc of it's own, reaching a record high and flooding all four lanes of Interstate 44 as well as many smaller roads and highways.

Here is the railroad bridge over the river-obviously, the water should not be that close!

When I returned to work today I took some time at lunch to take pictures.  This is the Roubidoux where it goes under the bridge downtown.

And here it is at the city park.  Actually you can't see where it normally runs because it's everywhere!  You could see that it has actually gone down a lot-there was evidence of where it had crossed the park road over to the pavilions and playgrounds.

Meanwhile it was back to business as usual at the clinic.  Until about 2:00 when the fire department came by to say that there may be an evacuation coming and to get ready just in case.  About 10 minutes later they returned to give the official mandatory evacuation order.  It seems heavy rains upstream were expected to cause the creek to rise another 4-6 feet locally before the end of the afternoon.  So basically they were telling everyone to get out.  Now.  Over the next 30 minutes we sent clients home, called owners to pick up, moved all the pets to top cages, unplugged and elevated all the electronics that we could,  pulled food bags off bottom shelves, and sand-bagged the back door.  We were ready.  But no one ever came by to make sure we left.  I don't know if that's how evacuations work but it did seem odd that other local businesses were not clearing out and people were still driving up and down the road towards the bridge.  After calls to both the fire and police departments we were told that even though emergency personnel were going door to door notifying people, the evacuation was not actually mandatory, just suggested.  So it wasn't really an emergency after all-but it was still pretty exciting for a little while.  Anyway, by that time we had called the rest of the appointments to tell them not to come in and it was almost time to head home anyway.  Thus far, I don't think anything has happened but we'll know more in the morning.  But for now, keep Wayneville and all the other flood damaged communities in your thoughts and prayers.