Thursday, Jan. 13, 2005 | 11:15 a.m.
OVERTON -- As the floodwater from the Muddy River continued to recede this morning, authorities began allowing some people to return to their homes.
About 300 of the Moapa Valley's approximately 8,000 residents were forced out of their homes by floodwaters Tuesday and Wednesday.
Meteorologists on Wednesday afternoon had expected the river to crest again by 5 p.m., although the Clark County Fire Department changed the prediction early that evening and the fields-turned-lakes quieted down later that night.
In Overton, a small town about 65 miles northeast of Las Vegas, the water had begun dropping about an inch every hour starting around 7 p.m., and later that night dropped 5 inches an hour during a three-hour period.
"We're expecting this trend to continue so the water will continue to drop," Erik Pappa, a Clark County spokesman, said this morning from the Clark County Emergency Operations Center. "The question is how fast."
No matter how fast it recedes, it won't be fast enough for people such as Mike Hanley, a sheet-metal worker and father of three. Neighbors alerted him to the flooding about 1 a.m. Wednesday. Four hours later, he was forced to flee his modest, cinder-block home in a low-lying part of Overton.
"We're going to have quite a cleanup," he said as he watched the floodwaters from his Ford pickup Wednesday afternoon.
The National Weather Service on Wednesday night canceled a flood watch for the Muddy River and Virgin River, which had flooded Mesquite, about 30 miles north of Overton, on Tuesday.
By the time of the cancellation, however, the Muddy River had already claimed retired telephone engineer and part-time Overton resident Larry Weidman's trailer in the Fun and Sun mobile home park.
Weidman was one of dozens of residents, mostly "snowbirds" from Idaho and Montana who spend winters in Southern Nevada, camped in their motor homes outside the Moapa Valley High School.
"We're just waiting and hoping the trailer doesn't flip over," he said. "It's just one of those things. It'll be $25,000 floating down the Muddy River."
Like many other residents of the area, Weidman and Hanley, who moved from Las Vegas to the small town last year, said they were told by their homeowners insurance agents that they did not need flood insurance because their homes were not in flood plains.
It's a complaint that Mesquite homeowner DeLoy Butterfield knows too well. By 3 p.m. Wednesday, Butterfield estimated the water had risen up to five feet in his recently purchased home on Cottonwood Drive, several hundred feet from the Virgin River, which had swelled from its normal 40-foot width to almost two miles wide.
But Butterfield did not know for sure how extensive the damage was to his 11-year-old, ranch-style home, having left with his wife, who is on oxygen treatment and suffers from severe arthritis. The couple left Tuesday night for a nearby hotel only to find their street impassable by Wednesday morning.
He was forced to try to catch a glimpse of his house by standing in a neighbor's backyard several doors down. The force of the water, Butterfield was told, was enough to tip a pickup he had abandoned when he moved with his wife to the hotel.
In addition to the house, Butterfield estimated he lost more than $10,000 in new furniture he and his wife bought eight months ago when they moved in.
"All my furniture is brand new," he said in a voice at times drowned out by the sound of metal shovels on asphalt and rushing water nearby. "We bought the very best. We figured it was going to be our last house so we bought the best."
After Wednesday, he was not so sure.
Since they moved to the neighborhood, the couple's street had been the site of two fires and another, smaller flood, Butterfield said.
"Maybe we weren't meant to live here," he said. "I guess we just have to clean up and start over. But all my money is gone and I don't have a chance of selling."
Butterfield spoke softly and nonchalantly about starting a new life, but said his wife, who remained at the Oasis that afternoon, was taking the loss hard.
"My wife can't even talk," he said. "All she does is sob."
Building inspectors, who estimated about one-third of the evacuated houses were without electricity, patrolled the street Wednesday afternoon.
The Salvation Army Clark County Command on Wednesday began soliciting donations of water and cash to the cover the costs of their involvement in flood relief for the two towns. The Salvation Army estimated it had served about 1,000 meals to volunteers each day.
It was part of a larger fundraising drive that Bill Nicholes, the mayor of Mesquite, said residents had started. By Wednesday afternoon, several cash donations had trickled in and at least one emergency fund had been set up at a local bank, he said.
"I'm very proud of the folks and how they've responded," Nicholes said. "It's the community spirit and the community pride that permeates."
Despite the damage, Nicholes said his city of 16,000 people "dodged a bullet" when waters began to recede Wednesday.
"Whether you want to call it God or Mother Nature, they were kind to us," he said.
Meanwhile the Overton Sewage Treatment Plant was swamped with floodwaters that knocked out power to operate it on Wednesday, although the lift station that pumps sewage to the plant was still operating with power from a generator loaned by the Clark County Water Reclamation District.
No raw sewage was spilled as of Wednesday, Reclamation District spokesman Marty Flynn said. If floodwaters inundated the station, sewage could flow into the Muddy River.
"There is heavy equipment out there trying to build a dirt berm around it," he said Wednesday afternoon. "... We're crossing our fingers that we'll make it through the night."
There had been no reports of flooding-related deaths in northeastern Clark County as of this morning.
But the havoc that came to tiny Overton was enough to remind resident Chloie Leavitt of recent disasters around the world. A devout Christian, Leavitt had monitored the tsunami in south Asia last month and followed the mudslides and severe weather that had blanketed Nevada and California.
Leavitt, whose home was not at risk Wednesday afternoon, said she expected the flood to be bad, but stood in awe of what she saw that day.
"This is heartbreaking," the homemaker and part-time writer said. "I was expecting it. I thought, 'It's going to be horrific,' but I hadn't imagined. It's on par with what's going on in the world. Everything that (experts had said) can't happen is happening."
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