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It's not the worst flooding I've ever seen, but for residents living here along Eight
Mile and Hidden Valley Roads today's sloppy weather was exactly what they didn't want
to see...
TAKE PKG CG- VOICE OF HARRY MILLER/HIDDEN VALLEY RESIDENT
@;00 CG-
VOICE OF HARRY MILLER/HIDDEN VALLEY RESIDENT "It was raining pretty hard last night. I
mean I woke up at 5:30 and it was really pouring. And I don't know how much longer before that
it was pouring but we got quite a bit of rain."
And for Miller and his neighbors that meant instant flood this morning, as the rains simply
rain off the ice and slush and straight down hill, inundating yards and fields and sending
a rush cascade of muddy, brown water along the roads and through yards.
The highest water hit earlier in the morning, but the rapidly melting snow just kept the
flood coming. By late morning, water had covered the East Side Highway at Bull Run, forcing
a Ravalli County road crew to throw up an emergency dam just to keep the water to the
side of the road.
Up in the foothills, it wasn't so much standing water that was the problem as running water.
By late morning, this private road was deeply rutted. By afternoon it was difficult to get
a passenger car between the growing ruts.
However, equipment was on scene with workers starting to do whatever they could to divert
the water, or simply get it moving by unplugging culverts and ditches.
For residents, the main task was pulling together, placing sandbags and making do... together...
MILLER "Whether it's a lot of snow, or in this case
a lot of rain, everybody seems to help each other out."