Posted Monday, June 9 --- 10:00pm

Now to Richland County -- to a community flooded last year and hit by a tornado three years ago. We're talking about Viola, where the Kickapoo River is several feet above flood stage at the Vernon County border.

The County is still doing a damage assessment. There are still a number of roads closed, and a community hit hard the last few years is dealing with disaster again.

The heart of the Kickapoo Valley has slowed.

"When I'm normally woke up... by milk trucks, all I could hear was the river outside of my bedroom window," Brian Jones says.

But people in Viola know how to deal with mother nature's beauty and its destruction.

"People who've been through this before... just buzzing, pulling cars... bringing things out of homes," Jones says.

One downtown business owner says he has four feet of water in his auto garage. People living on Main Street evacuated on Sunday. They're still unable to return home, unless by boat, to retrieve some essentials.

"I think we're going to need a ton of help once this starts going down... They can run pumps... do that kind of stuff."

The downtown also flooded last year, but the flood of 1978 is considered record-setting.

"I believe we need the national guard. You take this event right now, compared to 1978 ... which was a historic event. This has superseded that," Richland County Emergency Management Director Darin Gudgeon says.

Brian Jones moved his family to Viola from Madison last year...never expecting to see water rush past his neighbor's homes. "We saw toys... equipment ...logs... anything can be moved by this water... every time you see something go by, you think, that's a piece of a person's life," Jones says.

"We must have at least 200 calls this morning... so far... People wanting to get in, get out," an amateur radio operator at the emergency operations center says.

The water is eight feet deep in some parts of Viola. And, people say they need help... to get the rhythm back in the heart of the Kickapoo.
There are concerns about where the water will go and what that means for communities downstream, such as Soldier's Grove and Gays Mills.