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Fennville, Hopkins Deal With Allegan County Flooding

Posted at 5:31 PM, Apr 18, 2013
and last updated 2013-04-21 17:12:23-04

ALLEGAN COUNTY, Mich. — Michelle Martin was driving her two daughters to their Fennville school like any other morning on Thursday.

“When I took them to school at 7:30 this morning,” she says, “and we were coming down the main road, everybody was at a dead stop just before the park. And I couldn’t see up ahead what was going on. Once it was my turn, I see what’s going on and how deep the water was.”

Even as it lowered Thursday afternoon, water still flooded through a handful of Fennville neighbors, as cars continued to drive through streets that looked more like rivers.

Nick Harrison got news of the flooding early Thursday morning.

“My wife woke me up – ‘Hey, I need you to back up! I need you to go around the cars!'” he recalls. “I’m like, ‘Just drive.’ I come out and I’m like…’Wow…OK, I’ll take the kids to school.”

Harrison’s kids and Michelle’s daughters weren’t at school for long. All Fennville schools released at 11:00 a.m. because of the flooding.(NATS)

22 miles east of Fennville, Richard Weick and dozens of Hopkins residents filled sandbags for each other’s businesses and homes as water flow down the town’s main roads.

“Probably by about 6:00 this morning, it was starting to flood,” Weick says

Water from Bear Creek flowed dangerously close to businesses like Riley’s Buck Stop and the Quik Mart, where many of the sandbags ended up.

“Everybody’s been through it before or at least they’ve been through it once now,” Weick laughs.

No matter what happens to neighbors, one worker was heard explaining just why so many people were jumping into action.

“It’s Hopkins,” he told a group of people loading sandbags. “It’s what we do.”