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At Waverly, the epicenter of the devastation, suffering swept through the close-knit community of some 4,100 people.
Terri Owen remembered standing on her toes in the middle of the storm on Saturday, trying to keep her head above the rising water. He could see the woman across the street holding onto a pole on her front porch, her cries for help punctuated by piercing cries. Two days later, the woman’s voice was still in his head.
“We can’t help you!” Miss Owen remembered yelling.
The water was angry. Stoves, refrigerators, and cars were whipped. The column is loosened, said Mrs. Owen, and the screams intensified. The entire house has been lowered from the moorings and the block has been moved down. The woman died, her adult son died, too.
“God has never given me more grace than the woman who lost her life,” said Ms. Owen, as she sat on her friend’s muddy front porch and lowered her sunglasses to wipe her eyes. “I was just in a different place.”
Many were struggling to grasp all that was lost on Monday. Officials said the school was closed for at least a week and many roads and bridges remained closed to traffic.
Sheriff Davis said the destruction could be seen for about 10 miles.
Houses weren’t just flooded, they were destroyed from their foundations and vanished. Cars were thrown onto the roads. According to Chief Grant Gillespie of the Waverly Department of Public Safety, the hospital that was already busy with Covid-19 patients is now caring for those injured in the storm.
When Ryan Amell’s wife shared her phone number on Facebook on Saturday and said she was out on the water to save people on her little aluminum duck-hunting boat, she immediately received dozens of messages in desperation.
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