Volunteers upset with city leaders (7-31-20)

Volunteers upset with city leaders (7-31-20)

Kq2 much of southside st.

Joseph still in deep water after last week's flooding and then more rains thursday...good evening, im jodie o'brien.

Last week it was a debris clog in contrary creek overflowing banks and backing up sewer drains -- then it's been 7-10 inches of rain or even more compounding the problems. those living in the southside are struggling .

Kq2's kilee thomas joins us in studio with how they are trying to almost literally "stay afloat" it's been 11 days since floodwaters washed out the southside.homes have been ruined, families have been displaced.

Leaving the community scrambling and looking for answers.

Volunteers have stepped up to help, but they say they're frustrated with the lack of leadership from the city "these people need solutions long term.

They need to know that when they fix their house, their sewer isn't going to back up like it just did."

A team of volunteer landscapers have been down in the southend working free of charge to help piece the town back together"we did this as private citizens without assistance from the city."

This isn't the team's first disaster"to florida, to georgia, to texas, to lousianna the first time the local government hasn't been as involved in restoration efforts "no one from city council has contacted me, communicated with me, looked for guidance or direction as to what we're doing.

Nobody said get out of our way, this isn't what you should be doing, nobody said anything."

City council addressed the flood thursday in their weekly covid-19 meeting "i'm angry that sema can't or won't help and it has to do with the number of houses affected and the size of the disaster."

The volunteer team is thankful for the city streets crews and buchanan county for their efforts"we've shut down several of our normal operations to come down here.

There's a lot of projects we aren't going to do or we're gonna do a lot later because we got everyone down here trying to do this."but say st.

Joseph leaders have been silent.

"nobodys been out here communicating with me as to whether or not we need to vac and jet the sewers and get some of this stuff cleared out and maybe there's an infrastructure that's collapsed, but we need to explore it."

The landscapers said regardless of help from city leaders carry on helping southside rebuild"we're the southend.

We're proud.

We can do it.

We can do it with you, we can do it without you."

As we were leaving the southend this afternoon, councilman kent o'dell showed up to the site where volunteers were doing tree removal from contrary creek chose not to comment.

Reporting in studio, kilee thomas, kq2 news.

Also southside