Savanna fire chief keeps dutiful watch on flooding Mississippi River

It’s been a long couple of weeks for the Savanna Fire Department, which made sure the downtown was protected from the flood waters of the Mississippi River.

Late Sunday afternoon, Savanna Fire Chief Scott Wolfe woke up from a power nap in the corner of the fire station and made his way to the National Weather Service’s flood-monitoring website to see how the Mighty Mississippi was behaving.

“Right now everything is holding up well. The planning for this started back in February when we heard of the historic or near-historic snowfall in Minnesota.”

—  Scott Wolfe, Savanna fire chief

“We think it did crest Saturday night at 21.78 feet,” said Wolfe, the department’s only full time firefighter. “We check the levels at Bellevue, Iowa, because from past experiences, that tells us where the water will be when it gets here.”

According to the flood gauges maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, the flood first crested at Dubuque’s railroad bridge on Saturday, reaching 24.3 feet. The service revised its projection for Fulton, which is 24 miles south of Savanna. The flood was projected to reach 22.1 feet sometime after midnight Sunday. The crest expected to reach Rock Island Monday night.

Wolfe is just one of the department’s 37-staff members who have been working extra hours to try and maintain the barrier that is keeping Savanna’s downtown east of Main Street, which is Illinois Route 84, from the floodwaters.

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Jacob Helms, a volunteer firefighter with the Savanna Fire Department, refills a gas can on Sunday in preparation of refueling transfer pumps west of Main Street in the city's downtown. Firefighters along with volunteers and inmates from Kewanee and East Moline, constructed the wall with 47,000 sand bags in anticipation of river levels rising past the 21-foot mark. The pumps were beung used to pump floodwaters that seeped under the bags. (Earleen Hinton/Shaw Media)

Wolfe and his team of 36 volunteer firefighters began their preparations in February. They, along with Carroll County officials, took action after NWS models indicated major flooding would take place once the snow began to melt in Minnesota.

Last week, firefighters, local volunteers and inmates from Kewanee and East Moline, put the finishing touches on a sandbag wall behind businesses just west of Main Street in an attempt to keep the floodwaters out of the downtown business district.

“Right now everything is holding up well,” said Wolfe as he checked monitoring cameras placed at several locations. “The planning for this started back in February when we heard of the historic or near-historic snowfall in Minnesota.”

On March 20, a NWS webinar about the projected flooding hit home with the department.

“When everyone saw that data we were like ‘Yeah, we are in trouble,’” Wolfe said.

The preparation effort kicked into high gear a couple of weeks ago when the water reached flood levels. It rose to 19 feet, and then 20 feet.

“That was a huge 180-degrees in just a few days,” Wolfe said. “We knew it was going to exceed the 2019 level and thankfully the Illinois Department of Transportation and Carroll County’s Emergency Management called and really helped us out.”

That help included more sandbags, some 47,000 in all, and labor from inmates to get the bags in place before the river crested.

Under direction of firefighters, the inmates and other community volunteers, they completed the five-block long wall a week before the river crested.

On Sunday afternoon, firefighter Jacob Helms was busy refueling 14 pumps that were running along with two large diesel pumps to transfer water east of the sandbags back to the westside.

“We have 14 smaller pumps that run on gasoline and they have to be filled every two and a half hours,” Wolfe said.

He praised his firefighters for working long hours to help avert a disaster noting that the river will stay at major flood level for awhile.

“Right now the river is at 21 feet 8 inches and it is forecasted to be 21 feet by Wednesday and 20 feet by Saturday,” Wolfe said. “We’re just so worn out. There are a lot of 80-hour weeks for some of us.”

The department has also been documenting labor and material costs, such as gasoline, in hopes the city will be reimbursed by state or federal agencies.

“We are documenting all the hours, everything to qualify,” Wolfe said.

Stan Kosmecki, a Mount Carroll resident, came to Savanna on Sunday to see the flood levels up close.

He watched the river flow behind a row of downtown buildings as the sandbag wall held.

“I came over 10 days and took a look,” Kosmecki said. “I came over today and it’s a lot higher. I’m just a ‘looker.’“