SOUTH SIOUX CITY, Neb. — Tracie Pettit-Sininger and her family lost last summer to worrying about whether their West Third Street house could hold its own against the raging Missouri River a few yards away.
This summer, things are almost back to normal on her street. Almost.
"It's nice to see the neighbors," Pettit-Sininger said. "They are out there, doing things normal people would do."
Of all the Siouxland neighborhoods torn apart by the great flood of 2011, there were few where the division between protected and unprotected — the safe and unsafe — was so visible as West Third Street.
It was here where, in the early days of the flood last spring, crews erected an earthen floodwall right down the middle of the street. City officials said the 7,000-foot plastic-covered mound was the only way to protect South Sioux City.
On the south side, homes were protected. On the north, the nearest the river, homes were not. The result: Some homes had serious damage. Others escaped altogether.
The disparity, neighbors said, is still sinking in.
"It's frustrating. All your life, you've worked to pay off your home. Then this," said Pettit-Sininger, who had to rip everything out of her basement. She's still saving money to refinish it.
Her neighbor, Herman Frese, also had his basement ruined, as well as landscaping and trees.
"It will never go back to where it was. How do you replace a 30-foot-tall tree?" Frese said, pointing out empty spaces in his yard where trees once stood.
On the other side of the levee, homes were protected from the river, but were sitting ducks for vandals and groundwater.
When the waters threatened Linda Mildorfer's home, she told her husband she wasn't leaving. Everything but the essentials went into storage as they watched the river rise up on the other side of the levee.
"We were living out of laundry baskets, but we didn't move out because of all the vandalism that was going on," she said.
Barbara O'Dell was also on the protected side of the street, but that didn't save her finished basement, which was torn out after ground waters flooded it. O'Dell's husband, Jack, who died nine years ago, built the bar and dance floor in the basement.
"It's all gone. Now it's just concrete and two-by-fours," she said.
The levee stood for about three months. It was removed in September.
Today, South Sioux City Administrator Lance Hedquist defends the decision to build the levee on West Third Street. He said something needed to be done, and the city could only use public land, meaning the street was the only option.
"I can't put a wall on land I don't own," he said.
If it floods again, Hedquist said, he would probably follow a similar procedure.
About $400,000 has been spent repairing the street and storm drains. About 95 percent of work is done.
Pettit-Sininger said if she thought the river would flood again, she would consider moving. She hoped the Amy Corps of Engineers could work out a better river management strategy.
Frese said he's still frustrated with the response. The flood left him with lingering uneasiness about the river flowing behind his house.
"The story isn't the damage," he said. "The story is, when is it going to happen again?"
Information from: Sioux City Journal, http://www.siouxcityjournal.com