Poster: Friday, June 13 at 4:45

With all the recent rain, one of the hardest hit towns in southern Wisconsin was the Village of Avoca.

Three hard rains in less than a week led to a mandatory evacuation of the entire town Thursday night.

In the past week, parts of south-western Wisconsin have received more than a foot of rain.

And it proved too much for one town of 600 people.

Thursday afternoon a massive thunderstorm dumped upwards of four inches of rain on the Village of Avoca. Hours before the town had just cleaned up from their last major flooding which ended on Sunday.

"We had like five inches on Friday last week. Then another four and another three," said Avoca resident Logan Swinehart.

When the rain started again, one hundred firemen from seven stations, inmates from Prairie Du Chien and the community could not fill enough sand bags to stop the water.

Swinehart has lived in Avoca for all of his 66 years. He says despite the help there is nothing they could do when the water began to flow.

Said Swinehart, "It just come so fast that we couldn't stop it at the dike. It just went right through. Our cellar has 10 steps and it got up to the eighth step. Two more steps and it would have been in our living room."

By six o'clock a mandatory evacuation was declared. More than one hundred evacuees spread out to friends and family's houses. The Red Cross set up a shelter at a nearby High School in Muscoda. Thursday night 37 people stayed there.

"We'll be here until everyone is able to go back home or stay with friends or relatives. Until everyone is taken care of," said the Red Cross' Gerry Gilmour.

And to make matters worse when the rain stopped a house caught on fire on Second Street. Fireman battled the blaze while standing in three feet of flood water.

Added Gilmour, "This community is awesome. They opened their doors to strangers. Took people home with them. Took pets homes with them. And kept them over night."

When I spoke with Ken Palzkill, who's the director of Iowa County Emergency Management, he told me that the water is slowly receding.
But, they need many days of sunshine and no more rain to get most people back in their homes.