Like 'house arrest': Flooded roads, swamped bridges strand Nebraskans

For Justin Cash, a plumber whose house in Fremont became an island when floodwaters raced down his street, commuting to work now requires a hike, an airboat and two off-road vehicles.

For Mary Snowdon, a substitute teacher who lives just outside Niobrara, traveling 4 miles from her family’s ranch to buy gas and groceries now means a two-hour detour through South Dakota to avoid a bridge that disappeared when a dam burst.

And for Buck Wehrbein, a feed lot owner who lives west of Omaha, the last several days have felt like “house arrest” — the only road out of his development has vanished underwater.

Record floodwaters have ravaged Nebraska, but as they begin to recede, an alarming reality has come into view: Hundreds of miles of highway remain impassable, bridges have been wiped out and routine drives have become treacherous ordeals. In a vast, largely rural state where people rely on two-lane highways and aging bridges to go about daily life, the devastation of basic infrastructure promised to be an expensive and long-term challenge.

“I don’t know how they’re going to get everything fixed that needs to be fixed,” said Snowdon, who said she had canceled a teaching assignment in a nearby town because it would have required 143 miles of driving. “It’s like a dream and you’re going to wake up and it’s going to be all OK. But it’s not. This could be a year of traveling.”

For nearly a week, Nebraska and other Midwestern states have been inundated with water as rivers were overwhelmed with rain and melting snow that the frozen ground was unable to absorb. After days of harrowing helicopter rescues, frantic sandbagging and urgent evacuation orders, water levels had dropped in much of Nebraska by Tuesday and the daunting cleanup process was in full swing.

“We deal with flooding all the time,” said Kyle Schneweis, the director of the Nebraska Department of Transportation, but “when you talk about 1,500 miles of our system underwater, that’s an entirely different scope and scale.”

A full damage assessment from the flooding had yet to be calculated, but Schneweis said it was likely to reach hundreds of millions of dollars. State officials have promised to install temporary bridges and move swiftly with the most urgent repairs. But Nebraskans were bracing for many months of difficult travel in the state; some 200 miles of state highway were believed to be damaged or destroyed, as were 14 bridges. More county roads were also believed to be demolished.

Vice President Mike Pence visited the state Tuesday, and Gov. Pete Ricketts submitted an expedited request for federal disaster assistance.

On Tuesday, parts of northwest Missouri were seeing major flooding and new evacuations were ordered. But in Nebraska, traffic was flowing again on Tuesday on the main roads of Fremont, a city of 26,000 people, that had been virtually cut off from the rest of the state for days.

“We all felt like we had been in a shelter,” said Stephanie Callahan of Fremont, where water, milk and bread had to be delivered via helicopter and National Guard supply trucks for several days. “We had been isolated, but things are getting better.”

Still, better was hardly normal. To get to work Tuesday from his house on the outskirts of Fremont, Cash said he had walked about a mile from his home to an all-terrain vehicle, which he rode to a private lake, where he caught an airboat ride before taking a utility vehicle into town. It was the first time he had left home in five days, other than to pick up an airboat delivery of frozen pizza and other groceries over the weekend.

Cash was unsure when his road might be passable, or whether he could continue commuting to work under such conditions.

South of Fremont, in a development outside Waterloo, Wehrbein said he was thankful that his property had not been damaged, but he was eager for the only road out to be cleared so he could leave home and get back to work at his feed lot.

Wehrbein said he and his neighbors had managed to stay in good spirits, with a guitar performance and an airboat delivery of donated pizzas. The return of running water Tuesday was also welcome.

“I’m not hurting,” Werhbein said. “When you’re an active person, you kind of are drumming the table with your fingers.”

But for those hit hardest by the flooding, the damaged and swamped roads were especially painful.

Clint Pischel, a rancher from Niobrara, said he had lost more than 50 cows when torrents of water and car-size ice chunks tore through his county last week. He needed cleared roads and bridges to get his surviving cows to the veterinarian, receive deliveries of feed and restock his fuel supplies.

But with a major bridge gone and large trucks unable to reach his ranch, he said, “it shuts down all aspects of everything.”