Florence Faces Flooding

FLORENCE, SD - From wind damage to flooding, it was a busy day of cleanup for people in northeastern KELOLAND Wednesday.

That's exactly what was happening in Florence where too much rain fell in too short a time overnight, flooding basements and backing up sewer.

The streets of Florence were finally dry by midday Wednesday. Rick Crudden's yard was dry too, but he couldn’t say the same about his house.

"We probably had about a foot of water in the basement. It was just kind of coming in the corner of the house like a waterfall," Crudden said.

He was just one homeowner cleaning up the mess Wednesday after a fight to keep dry overnight. They already had two sump pumps hooked up and even had a third on hand.

"So we quick hooked that up, ran it out the basement window and just tried to keep up with it. It just wasn't keeping up," Crudden said.

And the town's sanitary sewer system couldn’t keep up either. Sewage started backing up into the Crudden's home and others. To ease pressure from the sewer lift station, the city brought a pump from the fire department.

There was so much water overnight, the extra pump was still needed throughout the day Wednesday to help the stressed sewer system.

"The ground's been so saturated lately, there’s no place for the water to go," Crudden said.

And it's even more saturated now, leaving Crudden simply hoping for some dryer days ahead.

The Cruddens have all their appliances downstairs unplugged and just hope they'll turn on again once the basement is dry.