HOLLAND (WTHC-AM/FM) — Chase Bell, 30, spent much of his day Tuesday, May 19, 2020, at his grandmother’s cottage on the shores of Lake Wixom, helping haul out anything that could be saved from the flood. (Listen to the complete interview.)
He thought he was lucky, living almost 20 miles from the disaster.
Two hours after talking to WHTC, homes not far from his were being evacuated.
“As of now, water is not expected to reach my home,” he wrote in a text message, “but we’re getting bags packed and vehicles gassed up in case we do need to flee.
“Midland is getting hit hard,” he added. “There’s alot of concern about Dow Chemical. They are flooding and they produce alot of hazardous chemicals that could make their way to our waters. My workplace is right next to Dow Chemical, so on top of all the destruction, I now have to be worried about being unemployed.”
Bell’s large, extended family in the greater Midland area are among of thousands affected by a series of disasterous dam breaks caused by several inches of rain — engorging the Tittabawassee River, which flows through Gladwin, Midland and Saginaw counties. The Tittabawassee, part of the Saginaw River watershed, also runs through the cities of Saginaw, Midland, and Sanford.
Back-to-back failures of the Edenville Dam in Gladwin County and the Sanford Dam in Midland County Tuesday evening led to an emergency evacution of an estimated 10,000 residents.
“It was kind of chaotic scene yesterday,” Bell said. “People were taking canoes into their houses and loading what they could and going out with it. It’s just something no one ever though they’d ever see in this area.”
Bell counted his family among the luckier ones — when the Edenville Dam that formed Wixom Lake broke, the lake level dropped 16 feet “over the course of a couple hours,” he said, sending a flood to Sandford. “I just feel terrible for the people of Sanford … people’s homes have been literally been floating down the lake.”
He’d expected people having flooded basements. By Wednesday afternoon, he said, boats, houses, cars and campers may “end up 60 miles away, in Saginaw Bay.”
As of Wednesday morning, no one he knew had died. He said emergency officials were “real good” about sending out text alerts to area residents. Bell had invited family members displaced by the flood to stay at his home, which seemed far out of the flood zone — about 20 miles from the chain of lakes, in Mount Haley Township. They declined, choosing to go even farther out of the area. Bell now may follow them.
Nothing like this has ever happened, he said, recalling spending almost every weekend of his life at his grandparents’ cottage, every Fourth of July enjoying a family reunion and downing foot-long hot dogs.
Now?
“This lake has blown out, so the lake is gonna be gone for a long while. There’s boats sitting out in the middle of the lake,” he said. “I really don’t know how they’re going to move these things and how we’re going to rebuild, but we’ll figure it out.”
Tuesday, he watched neighbors jumping from one rooftop to the next to avoid the water. Strangers showed up to help families move their possessions to higher gounds. He said many items were tucked into the cottage’s second floor. They’re hoping those family treasures are still OK>
Friends who run a blueberry and Christmas-tree farm where Bell’s worked at for 16 years told him they lost their home and farming equipment to the floods, along with property.
“It’s so heartbreaking to me,” Bell said. “Several friends on lake lost boats, campers and homes.”
His phone keeps buzzing and ringing, with emergency alerts and calls from friends checking in.
“This is going to be a big wake up call to the Four Lakes Task Force,” he said.
The task force is supposed to “administer and oversee the maintenance and operations of the four dams and lakes,” according to its website, which lists the lakes as Smallwood, Secord, Sanford and Wixom.
“These dams weren’t up to code,” Bell said. “Something needed to be done and they put it off for too long. These dams are over 100 years old and I think it was just a lot of poor planning on whoever’s in charge of the lake levels. because they knew we had 5 inches of rain coming, you know. They needed to start dropping the levels days before this happened.”
Some of this, he said, could have been prevented.
Is the task force responsible for helping people recover from these floods?
“I sure hope they do.”
