It will likely be weeks before residents and business owners in Cook have a handle on the cost to rebuild in the wake of last week’s flood. Some businesses, particularly those without flood insurance, may never rebuild. Many homeowners, as well, face a long road to recovery, even with state and federal assistance.
While the floodwaters have receded, the impact of last week’s flood will linger for months, even years, to come. Businesses could close permanently. Housing stock could be rendered unsalvageable, contributing to the city’s already serious housing crunch. As the focus has now turned to the clean-up, it’s worth asking why it was that the city of Cook seemed so remarkably unprepared for the rising waters and waited so long to engage emergency officials from St. Louis County. It was clear to many by late Tuesday afternoon that the torrential rains that set in earlier that day were going to have serious ramifications for the city of Cook, much of which is located within the floodplain of the flood-prone Little Fork River. Cook has a long history of floods— indeed, flood waters twice inundated large parts of the city as recently as the summer of 2018.
Given the regularity of flooding in Cook, the city should have contacted county officials and taken the initiative in addressing the rising waters, even before the rain had ended Tuesday evening. On Wednesday morning, River Street was still high and dry although the river was rising. Yet, according to the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, the city didn’t reach out for help until 10:45 a.m. on Wednesday, when flood waters started to inundate the downtown. By that point, county officials determined it was too late to mount an effective sandbagging operation. Had a sandbagging operation gotten underway Tuesday evening, once the worst of the rain had ended, it could have made a big difference for many Cook home and business owners. But critical hours went by with no noticeable response from the city. That left businesses and homeowners largely to their own devices or reliant on help from community organizations, like the Lions Club, to do what they could to stave off the high water. Some contacted local contractors to bring sand. Others bought out the local supply of plastic garbage bags because regular sandbags weren’t available.
Huge numbers of volunteers turned out to help, as people in our area always do, but the efforts were organized by local groups, residents, or businesses, with little input or assistance from the city.
The incident response raises many questions. In a city that is unusually prone to flooding, why were sandbags not stockpiled ahead of time and quickly deployed for use by residents and business owners? Why didn’t the city have a presence on social media to issue warnings and provide information to residents? There was information available on Facebook, but mostly because some local residents made a point of trying to keep their fellow community members informed.
Every incident such as this provides the opportunity to assess the response and take steps to ensure that the next flood won’t have the same devastating impact. It’s clear that if the city of Cook wants to encourage investment in repairing commercial buildings and housing stock in low-lying parts of the city, it needs to have a robust plan to protect those properties in the future.
As the state climatologist noted, the frequency of these storms that once qualified as 100-year or even 500-year events is increasing due to climate change. It’s not a question of whether we’ll see similar rainfall events or melting snowpack that sends the Little Fork outside of its banks in the future. It’s only a question of when. If the most recent result is indicative of what Cook residents or business owners can anticipate during such future events, it’s awfully discouraging.
The U.S. Geological Survey could play a role as well by installing a water level gauge further upstream from Cook. Currently, the closest is well downstream at Linden Grove. An upstream gauge could serve as an early warning indicator as water levels rise and give the city of Cook precious time to implement flood mitigation measures. If there’s a potential silver lining in this disaster, it can only come if the city recognizes what went wrong this time and takes serious steps to guard against a similar result the next time the waters rise.