Oglala, Ponca and Santee Sioux tribes among those affected by major disaster
It just before the end of the school day when the waters came.
Emy Collin was getting ready for her son’s return from school. By the time his bus approached the county road leading to his home, floodwaters from nearby Ponca Creek began pouring over a berm and into the family’s rural Verdel farm.
The water’s depth quickly rose, engulfing the family’s home, cars and two sheds. It brought with it tree branches and massive chunks of ice nearly three feet thick in some places.
“We watched the water coming up closer and closer to our house,” Collin said.
The water poured into the family’s chicken coop, drowning their chickens, and then flooded into a 27-foot camper on the family’s farm that houses nine cats. Just four of the cats survived.
Water filled their basement, where their son sleeps, and it prevented the family from reaching nearby state Highway 12 to pick up their son from his school bus stop.
Because they couldn’t get to their son to pick him up from school, the 11-year-old stayed with his bus driver for two days.
Emy Collin said not being able to come home was traumatizing for her son and he’s begun therapy to help him heal from the experience.
“It’s been really tough on us,” she said. “Now we’re still stranded out here.”
Floodwaters are seen near the Collin family farm in rural Nebraska. Courtesy photo
Over the past two weeks, dozens of
communities across Nebraska have seen historic flooding following a devastating snow and rain storm that was preceded by several weeks of record snowfalls. With temperatures rising, most of the snow in the state has finally begun to melt, swelling creeks and rivers and leading to the collapse of dams, bridges and roads throughout the state.
Throughout the Midwest, tribes and their citizens are being impacted by massive flooding, including the Santee Sioux and Ponca tribes in Nebraska and the
Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota. In Nebraska, those tribes with land and properties along the Niobrara River in northeast Nebraska have been especially affected by the flooding.
The
Santee Sioux Tribe suffered a water line break and a brief power outage after five power lines were toppled by floodwaters and ice. The tribe was forced to evacuate some elderly citizens and families with children to its casino just south of its main community.
The tribe has since managed to repair its water system enough to allow water to begin flowing again, though much work remains to repair the tribe’s damaged infrastructure.
The
Ponca Tribe owns several buildings in Niobrara, including one that was severely damaged by huge chunks of ice and water.
“Some of them were as big as cars,” said Ponca Chairman Larry Wright Jr. of the ice.
The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska, headquartered on their ancestral homelands in Niobrara, has been severely impacted by the...
Posted by Ponca Tribe of Nebraska on Tuesday, March 19, 2019
The tribe had several tribal families who were affected by flooding, including Emy Collin’s family.
She said floodwaters have left her family nearly stranded on their five-acre farm about three miles from the nearest town of Verdigre.
The overflowing Ponca Creek near the boundary of their farm closed the county road that serves as their only connection to town and badly damaged the bridge over Ponca Creek.
Floodwaters inundated the family’s home, outbuildings and vehicles. It also ruined their garden, which contained buffalo berries, elder berries, chokecherries and june berries.
Emy and Scott Collin [
GoFundMe] have three children, all of who live at home.
Suffering from a severe back injury and living on disability, Emy Collin already struggled to get to town. Now the family is facing an uncertain future as their insurance company won’t cover all of the damage caused to their farm, including their ruined belongings and two sheds, as well as a freezer and motorcycle.
Strangely enough, a newer upright freezer was destroyed by the floodwaters, though a 20-year-old chest freezer owned by the couple that floated in the water for some time still works.
“They don’t make them like they used to,” Emy Collin said.
A $12,000 forge they built for their son was damaged.
Now Emy and Scott Collin are struggling to get an assessor to their farm to develop an estimate of the amount of damages caused by the flooding.
The Collin family farm is seen after floodwaters struck their property in Nebraska. Courtesy photo
But the family has received some support, including bottled water from the fire department, food and cleaning supplies. Emy Collin’s tribe, the Ponca, also provided donations to the family.
Emy Collin said she can still get to town, but is forced to walk through water and over an unstable bridge to get to the highway, where he daughter picks her up to go to town.
“If that bridge went out, we would have no way to get to the outside world,” she said.
The family can’t even drink their well water as they fear it might have been contaminated by floodwaters.
But the family experienced at least one small miracle this week when the waters receded enough for their son to be able to walk through floodwaters to meet his father and mother.
As Scott Collin lead his son back to the farm, he broke free from his father upon seeing his mother.
“He ran across the bridge into my arms,” she said.
More photos of the devastation in Niobrara, along with photos from the Ponca Agency Building, and from the other side of the Mormon Canal Bridge. Photos courtesy Jason Doerr.
#poncaflood2019
Posted by Ponca Tribe of Nebraska on Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Just south of Verdel in the small town of Verdigre, another Native couple, Bill and Dana Yunker, barely escaped the swiftly rising floodwaters two weeks ago.
The couple was preparing dinner on March 13 when someone knocked on their door and told them they had to evacuate.
Within minutes, water began pouring into the street outside and then into the family’s yard. The couple’s oldest daughter took some of the children and left for her home in a town about 17 miles south of Verdigre.
But after Bill and Dana Yunker gathered a few clothes and some blankets, they prepared to leave in their vehicle with the rest of their children. But they couldn’t find their car keys.
They realized one of their children had accidentally grabbed. As they picked up the phone to call their oldest daughter to come back, the water began rushing into their home and over their shoes.
Their daughter pulled up and tossed them their keys, and the family sped away.
“We barely made it out of here,” said Dana Yunker.
Floodwaters are seen near the Yunker home in Nebraska. Courtesy photo
The couple tried to return home a few hours later but were turned away by emergency responders.
When they returned home the next day, they found water in their basement up to their first floor. A water line around their home showed the water had risen to nearly two feet above their first floor.
“It looked like a tornado had gone through there,” Bill Yunker said.
Everything in their garage had been destroyed, as well as their furnace, water heater and electrical panel in their basement. Their siding and insulation was shredded in places, and their front porch had been moved away from the home’s foundation.
The couple had never purchased flood insurance, because the cost of such insurance for people living in a floodplain was nearly $400 a month more.
Now the family needs to raise money to replace their ruined furnace and water heater.
The Yunkers finally returned home 10 days after being evacuated and spent last weekend pumping water out of their basement and cleaning up their home. But as they look out their front door at their neighbors facing a similar fate, they know it will be difficult to raise support for themselves.
“It’s kind of tough for us to really ask for help,” Bill Yunker said. “I’ve just never been that kind of person.”
But they said they’ve been overwhelmed with support from their neighbors and volunteers from outside the community. Those neighbors and volunteers helped clean up the debris on their property.
“They came from states away to help us with the cleanup of the debris,” said Dana Yunker. “We’re really grateful and blessed that we were helped in that way.”
But even as tribal families in Nebraska begin cleaning up their flood-ravaged homes, their Lakota neighbors to the north continue to fight an unrelenting deluge of melting snow and swelled creeks and rivers.
The Pine Ridge Reservation has seen two weeks of record snowfall and flooding, and numerous families have become stranded in their homes or displaced to emergency shelters.
South Dakota National Guard soldiers have brought large water storage containers to the reservation so communities that still have no functioning water system can have drinkable water.
But with many rural roads washed away and ruts deep enough to bury entire vehicles, the tribe faces a long road to recovery.
Bottled water is hard to find in the handful of reservation grocery and convenience stores, and those residents who have attempted to help their neighbors are finding their own resources stretched to the breaking point.
Eileen Janis, a local community organizer, said she met a woman Tuesday who had traveled to Pine Ridge to collect donations for people in need in her own community many miles away but ran out of gas on the way home.
Volunteers on horseback have begun transporting what meager supplies they can carry to isolated reservation residents who have no way to travel to town on their own.
“They carried what they could, but on horseback it’s hard to carry a case of water,” Janis said.
People are using small boats and rubber rafts to travel in especially flooded areas. She said she saw one such family riding in a boat on their way to get bottled water.
In the back of their boat, their son lay sleeping.
“It’s so awesome to see people helping people out as much as they can,” Janis said.
#NebraskaFlood Tribal Meeting
Ways to Help
To assist the Ponca Tribe with flood
relief efforts, visit
poncatribe-ne.org and click
on the "Donate to Ponca Flood 2019 Relief Efforts" button at the top of the
page.
Danielle Red Owl has
posted
on social media an extensive list of ways to assist the Santee Sioux Tribe.
A
PDF
version is available.
Additionally, Owl's company, Owl Dreams Company, is selling t-shirts to
raise funds for impacted flood victims of Nebraska. More info can be found at
this link:
goo.gl/uYZ55S
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