Flood waters do heavy damage to Fairgrounds

HARTINGTON — Flood waters swept through the Cedar County Fairgrounds last week, causing damage to many of the buildings and even completely moving one of the 4-H barns.

Water swept in from the west, across 564th Avenue, carrying corn stalks, mud and debris with it.

Some of the corn stalks wound up in the fence, weighing it down and ultimately toppling it over.

More cornstalks can be found in all of the animal pens, and some of the buildings as well.

Cedar County Fair Board Vice President Jim Specht assessed the damage on Thursday, and said each day it looked better in terms of water draining so that work can begin to repair the damage.

On Friday, deep spots of mud made it impossible to drive into the Fairgrounds.

Trinity Lutheran representatives inspected the Lutheran Lunch Stand and said it is obvious that at least three inches of water covered the floor of the building, but at this time it appears the facility suffered only limited damage.

Specht has checked each building and while there is some damage, he admits things could have been worse.

The worst damage came to the 4-H hog barn that was lifted off the concrete and moved approximately 100 yards to the east. When looking at it from the road, only slight damage can be seen of the show arena that was clipped by the hog barn as it floated away. The barn also took out a utility pole before coming to rest in the middle of a field.

The rest of the animal barns handled the water pretty well, but there is still mud, slime, and cornstalks that will need to be shoveled out of those areas.

Specht says he has checked each building out and while there is a fair amount of damage, he admits things could have been worse.

“We’ll get it done,” said Specht. “We’re going to, we’ll have to replace all the fence and we’re going to start, I think this upcoming week, cleaning up buildings. As soon as it’s dry enough to get in there. We’ve got a lot of buildings to clean out and mud and slime out of the buildings. There’s a foot and a half of corn stalks on the south end of that quilt building.”

The quilt building, like the office and some of the others, had water up to a foot high at points. Sheetrock will need to be replaced, among other things like refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, and anything that was sitting on the ground and was destroyed by the water.

The list of work to be done ranges from replacing the door to the new bathrooms, repairing the road on the Fairgrounds that patrons turn onto before parking, leveling certain areas back out, working on the rodeo arena, and more.

One cause of concern was for the campers and boats that are stored on the Fairgrounds. Some campers were in the Show Arena, some were down in the new horse barn, and Specht
is unsure of the potential damage to any of those campers.

In some places, water got as high as the camper axles, and in others even a little higher, said Specht. He did not personally go into any of the campers but did share concerns, especially with the few campers that were kept in the horse barn. 

“Unfortunately, this is the first year we put campers in the horse barn or the show arena, and that’s where the most damage was to campers,” said Specht. “But really they had very little damage.”

This flooding was an all-to-recent reminder of a storm from last summer that caused the Fair Board to scramble in the final week leading up to the Cedar County Fair.

High creek levels created a muddy rodeo arena, but overall damage from that storm was minimal.

This time around, Specht says this is the worst flood damage he has seen in his 20 years working with the Fair Board.

“It has been unusual to have two floods down here in less than a year,” said Specht. “We’ve had water situations before in the last 20 years, and a couple of times we’ve had water come through [the Fairgrounds] but not a lot we can do about it.”

Specht continued by saying, “This was the worst. Just because the ground was frozen, the water had nowhere to go and with the rainfall, we had and then the melting snow. I think this was by far the worst.”

Now comes time for the clean-up as the Fair Board still has a county fair to host from July 17-21.

The Cedar County Fair Board has set up a few clean- up nights in the upcoming days. Clean-Up Nights are planned both Thursday and Friday night.

Information with specific times will be posted on the Cedar County Fair Facebook page, and they are asking volunteers to bring buckets, rags, shovels, brooms, demo tools, and general cleaning supplies.

Fair Board member Alissa Bartling said these are tentative dates depending on how things dry and how manageable it is to get onto the grounds with vehicles.

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