“Our mulch is now on the porch,” said Vicki Blake, as she walked in her rain boots to inspect the damage to Creekside Retreat’s conference center.
About eight companies were at Creekside off and on Feb. 12 removing flooring, furniture and cabinetry and working to clean up the mess left from flash flooding on Feb. 7.
The hotel had just finished a deep-clean of all of its rooms a week before the flood hit. Last week, crews were stripping the rooms, drying them out and salvaging what they could.
Bathroom floors and tubs were caked in mud. The carpet was soggy. Furniture was flipped upside down and moved around.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]But the hotel and its staff had a positive attitude. “We’re digging in and doing work,” Blake said.
Until the offices are put back together, front desk employees are working from home answering phone calls from guests.
The goal is to have the hotel open again by June 1, Blake said.
Until then, she is working with other local hotels to find a place for her groups and individual guests. She’s had to either relocate or cancel 14 groups. No guests were staying at the hotel when the flood hit Feb. 7. Guests had booked rooms for Feb. 8, but Blake was able to find another place for them to stay.
“We’ve established ourselves there as a five-star property. People were disappointed when we can’t get them in right now. We’re anxious to get opened up as quickly as we can,” Blake said.
‘Hit all at once’
Three businesses in the State Road 46 East area sustained significant damage in the Feb. 7 flash flood: Creekside Retreat, NAPA auto parts and Brown County Tire.
However, all three are remaining open.
Creekside Retreat, a collection of former long-term apartment buildings, has four buildings which had been remodeled into hotel rooms and a conference center. The first floor in all of those buildings had about 28 inches of flood water in them. The other four buildings were not being used.
“It’s devastating to say the least,” Blake said.
Voland Hammond Property LLC bought the property about 15 years ago. Blake came on as general manager five years ago to help turn the apartments into hotel rooms.
This is the third time the property has been damaged since the Flood of 2008. It also was hit by the summer flood of 2015.
“Mr. (Jim) Hammond is not going to give up. He’s proud of what he’s done here,” Blake said.
Creekside Retreat does have flood insurance, and adjusters were there last week assessing damage.
When the flood hit late in the afternoon Feb. 7, Blake was driving back from out of state. “People were giving me updates. Our employees had all gone home because the water was getting high and they needed to get to their homes,” she said.
About 45 minutes before the flood waters hit, she had received information that the hotel looked like it was in the clear. “It was a flash flood, so it just hit all at once,” Blake said.
At Brown County Tire, owners Ray and Debbie Guffey, their son Chad and three other employees had about 15 minutes to unplug and move as many tools, equipment and files as possible before the water was above their knees.
“It was pretty scary. We were trying to unplug things and got shocked a couple of times, to keep from ruining things. I was still trying to put up stuff and then my secretary finally grabbed me and said, ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ By the time we got out, it was over our knees,” Debbie said.
Last week, the family-owned company was still assessing damage. This is also the third time they have experienced flooding.
However, they’re not giving up.
“I think he’s (Ray) thinking about opening up for a little while longer. We may be working out of just one side until we can get the other side cleaned, but it’s just going to be a lot of work to get this side together,” Debbie said.
“I can’t guarantee anything, but we’re going to try.”
The shop’s new tire balancer was lost in the flood, along with files containing work orders, office supplies, and at least one computer.
Last week, Debbie estimated the damage from this flood could cost them between $50,000 to $60,000.
A GoFundMe fundraiser has been started to help the business cover the repair costs.
Brown County Tire has been operating off State Road 46 East on Salt Creek Road for 28 years.
The Guffeys didn’t have flood insurance when the first flood hit in 2008, and they had to pay for repairs out of pocket. When the second flood came in 2015, they had flood insurance, but didn’t receive their full coverage amount. This time, they are without insurance again and must cover repair costs out-of-pocket.
Loyal customers are influencing the couple’s decision to reopen.
“That’s the reason why he opened in the last flood. Ray was ready to close and then they kept talking to him: ‘You gotta open. You can’t leave.’ So we opened. That’s pretty much the same thing now,” Debbie said.
“We want to be open because so many people depend on us. They don’t want to go anywhere else, but how many times can you go through this? It’s just devastating,” she said.
Brown County Tire does mechanic services, tire sales and tire repairs. They employ seven people, including themselves. They also run a wrecker service. They lost one of their three wreckers in this flood.
When asked if they’d consider moving the businesses, Debbie said they are just going to remain where they are and see what happens. She and Ray are of retirement age; Ray is 71 and she’s 65.
If they get volunteer help to clean up the shop, Debbie said they could reopen in the next couple of weeks, but it depends on the amount of help they can get.
The recent floods cause them to monitor the weather more closely, she said.
“There’s been several times last year that if we heard rains coming in, we took our computers and file cabinets, the drawers and put everything up that we could. We had false alarms, but we were prepared,” she said.
“This time it was a little bit of water in here and I thought, ‘Well, we’re OK.’ I came into the office to get more stuff to take upstairs and I opened that door to go out into the garage, it was like two-and-a-half feet deep. It came quickly.”
‘Can’t get through life like that’
NAPA Auto Parts co-owner Scott Spradling estimated the store had 18 to 20 inches of water in it after the rain stopped.
Employees had been monitoring the weather that week, so on Wednesday morning they started moving everything off the ground. They even brought tables over from the NAPA store in Columbus to put items 3 feet off the floor.
“Our damage this time was minimal. I was over there Friday cleaning up and it might be a few thousand dollars instead of $50,000 or $100,000. It was not as bad as it’s been. It’s still no fun,” Spradling said.
This is also the third time NAPA has been flooded. Spradling and his brother-in-law, co-owner Craig Fuson, have been leasing the property for NAPA since 1988.
“From July 1, 1988, to June of 2008, 20 years, never had one drop of water in the store. Then the big flood of June of 2008, we had about 40 inches of water in there,” Spradling said.
“We had never dealt with anything like that. It seemed like that flood was so bad everywhere that we were just saying, ‘OK, that’s a 100-year flood.’ That probably cost us $100,000.”
Then in 2015, the store had 20 inches of water in it again.
“Then we were really concerned. We threw out a bunch (of inventory),” he said.
“We took out all of the shelves in 2015 that were within 2 feet of the floor. As far as on the floor, we were just trying to keep case products, like cases of oil and gallons of antifreeze in cases. With that stuff, it will ruin the box, but it doesn’t hurt the quarts or gallons of stuff that are inside.”
The damage from the 2015 flood totaled around $50,000. “Frankly, it’s more than that store can even make in those periods of times,” Spradling said.
“Our other stores are basically supporting it. It’s our smallest store. We like it, we like being there, but it just can’t be in that building.”
Brown County Tire is the store’s biggest customer, he said.
“At some point in time, we’re going to have to leave, and we like the location. I saw my partner this morning in the Columbus store and he told me he couldn’t sleep last night because it’s raining and we just can’t get through life like that,” he said.
Spradling said they would like to keep NAPA store in Brown County, but he doesn’t know where they could move in Nashville.
Why does this keep happening?
Spradling thinks another culvert is needed under State Road 46 East to help water flow into Salt Creek across the road.
Harry Maginity, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Transportation, said there is a small culvert in that area that is covered up with brush. INDOT looked at the pipe last summer. They plan to get a maintenance crew out to clear the brush so that the culvert can be inspected. Recently, maintenance crews have been working on filling potholes in Indianapolis, Maginity said.
“They will be out there to get that cleaned out. At the point that they can get a good inspection on it they will know what condition the pipe is in and whether to replace the culvert or repair the pipe,” he said.
“We are aware of it. They visited it not too long ago.”
Spradling also believes the fill that was put in front of Creekside Retreat may have resulted in more flooding. In 2011, about 1,600 truckloads of dirt and clay were put in the low-lying area.
Voland-Hammond Properties LLC, the same group that owns Creekside, applied for the permit to place the fill there. The Brown County Area Plan Commission initially denied it, because the director of the APC at the time, David Woods, said hydraulic modeling showed it leading to floodplain elevation increases of up to 0.14 feet in surrounding areas.
Woods eventually allowed the permit. Last week, Blake said an engineer had come out to evaluate the fill and stated it would not have brought the flood level up more than a quarter inch.
“Highway 46 is sort of like a dam. When we had just Old 46, it just flowed on down. But the highway is probably one of the larger dams we have in the county,” Blake said.
She said Voland-Hammond Properties is willing to work with local government, state government and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources to “try to do what we can” to help keep water from getting into buildings in the area.
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Local renters and property owners are still being encouraged to report flood damage by calling 211.
County commissioner Diana Biddle said last week that very few damage reports had been made. “If we rise to a certain level of monetary damage, then we may qualify for state and federal funds for damages,” she said.
As of last week, Biddle said she had not received a monetary figure yet for damage to county-owned properties such as the Brown County Fairgrounds and Deer Run Park because assessments were still being done.
“Parks and rec lost a shed. My understanding is they found it down the creek. The split-rail fence that was installed for the boat ramp area, a lot of that washed away, but the baseball field fences caught most of it. They will reassemble it,” she said.
Biddle said water did get into the concession buildings at the fairgrounds.
Based on damage assessments so far, Biddle said it didn’t appear that the flash flooding on Feb. 7 rose to the level of the floods in 2008 or 2015.
“The 2015 flood was an isolated micro-burst in Hamblen Township. The 2008 flood was far more widespread. But it was rain over a long period of time that just accumulated. This was a little bit of rain all at once, like five or six inches. The other was like 10 inches in 2008,” Biddle said.
Flood waters did recede quickly.
Last week, Brown County Highway Superintendent Mike Magner reported that all county roads were open at least one lane wide. He didn’t have a dollar amount either for flood damage done to county roads; his department was still working on gathering that information.
He said it could take most of the summer to make road repairs.
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