OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Iowa and Nebraska school officials in areas hard hit by flooding earlier this year expect that, as school starts, they’ll have to deal with displaced students — some still traumatized by their ordeals.
A massive March storm dumped inches of rain runoff and snow melt into several rivers, pushing some to record levels in Nebraska, Iowa and other states, breaching levees and dikes.
In the southwestern Iowa’s Hamburg, school superintendent Mike Wells told the Omaha World-Herald that he expects about 20 percent fewer students when classes begin Aug. 23. He says the community lost about 200 homes in the flooding, and “there’s just nowhere for families to come back to.”
Across the Missouri River in Nebraska, Fremont superintendent Mark Shepard worries about the trauma. He says the first rainstorm after the flooding caused some elementary students to weep, worried that more flooding was imminent.
