Transcript

Location: 2267 US-53

Jeffery Hotson: My name is Jeffery Hotson, and I would have been 11 years old. I went down to visit my grandparents, that lived at 313 Caledonia Street. And they were not directly affected by the flood, but the streets to the west of them were blocked because of the flooding. And there was sandbagging going up on Highway 53 abouts two-thirds of the way down the road from Onalaska. We would go down there, and you could see they were putting in sandbags along the bank. They had a truck there full of sand and people filling the bags up with sand. And then there was a bunch of people, a lot of students. College students, maybe some high school students that, were filling the bags and stacking them. Being civic-minded and not really comprehending the true nature of what would be required, but I wanted to go down and help build the dikes with the sandbags being 11 years old. And I thought, well, would I be able to handle that? I thought I would. I mentioned it to my dad, and he just chuckled. Um, Didn’t happen.

Right away, I remember them saying how big the flood was and it was going to be one of the biggest floods up until that point. And you know it was in all the newspapers. I think I remember hearing it up on the a national news. Kind of interesting to see it all happen. I had never really experienced anything like that before, but I was only 11.