Water was still sitting high along the Looking Glass River on Airport Road in DeWitt on Wednesday, about two weeks after the peak of recent flooding, and Michael Parwey said nearly his whole property was still affected. The homeowner, who has lived there for about five years, said about two-thirds of his land remained underwater.
Parwey said this round felt different from the flooding he had seen before. He said he did not know whether the water would make it into the house, and at one point fish were swimming in the front yard and within a few feet of the front door. “It’s been actually kinda nerve wracking,” he said.
That was the kind of scene that turned a weather headline into a neighborhood problem. Parwey said the family knew the property was in a flood zone and had flood insurance for catastrophes. On Wednesday, he said the policy was worth the cost for peace of mind. “We knew it was in a flood zone and we have flood insurance to cover any catastrophes,” he said.
Rama Gupta of McKenzie Agency in St. Johns said homeowners should think hard about their own risk even if they do not live beside a river. She said more storms are expected in the state and that many flood maps have not been updated since 2007 or 2009. Her advice was blunt: ask whether there have been two 100-year floods in the past five years, and ask how well the city handles storm and sewer infrastructure. “We’re only going to continue having more storms in the state, and flood maps haven’t been updated - a lot of them since 2007 2009,” Gupta said.
The friction in stories like this is that the water can linger long after the sirens stop. Parwey said ducks were swimming in the front yard, another reminder that the river had not simply overflowed and moved on. He said, “We want that coverage. We literally had ducks swimming in the front yard. It’s definitely a concern.”
For DeWitt homeowners watching a flood watch elsewhere in the region, from Missouri to Wisconsin and west Michigan, the lesson is less about one storm than about the next one. Parwey’s yard was still underwater two weeks later, and that is the answer: the danger does not end when the rain does.