Mason City, IA- Two years after surviving record flooding, a Mason City couple says they feel safer.
Flood waters washed out the basement of Caroline and Calvin Braastad's old house and forced them to move, but they didn't have to go far.
They wanted to stay on the same property and to meet city code they raised up their foundation seven feet to get it out of the 100-year flood plain.
It took only a few hours for flood waters to race into Mason City homes in June of 2008, including the Braastad's.
It's taken more than a year to get settled in their new place.
"I think it was just so traumatic for everybody we were just standing watching it," Carolyn said.
Before the summer of 2008, they didn't pay much attention to flood warnings.
"The homes over here by the river always flooded but we never had, and I have no Idea if any warnings were given at all because I wouldn't have been tuned into it," Carolyn said.
KIMT's Chief Meteorologist Adam Frederick says people in the area are more aware now.
"In some regards, before there was the idea of it won't happen, it can't happen here, unfortunately it did happen the good news though it's probably not gonna happen again this year," he said.
But he says the threat from area rivers and streams this spring is different.
"The setup for this time around is more snowmelt, with a steady rain, the situation in 2008 was we had saturated ground and we got hammered by a bunch of thunderstorms that continued to drop rain over the exact same location time and time again," said Frederick.
Both Frederick and the Brastaad’s believe the community is probably a lot stronger and prepared after surviving the flood of 2008.
"I think we're now aware that it isn't just that little section of Willow Creek or it isn't East Park it's not just a few areas of town that could get flooded," she said.
Even though they feel safer the trauma of the flood is still with them. They also take comfort in the fact that Mason City now has the Code Red system,
It allows emergency workers and city leaders to alert people about emergencies and disasters.
If you have a standard landline phone you are automatically signed up for the code red system.
You can have an alert sent to your cell phone by signing up online.
