As southeast South Dakota deals with flooding, some local city officials say the natural disaster has brought community members together.
The city of Canton in the southeastern corner of South Dakota is among the communities facing the worst flooding.
The National Weather Service said Canton recorded 18 inches of rain between Thursday and Saturday last week.
Volunteers filled sandbags to help those dealing with flooding.
Sandi Lundstrom is the Mayor of Canton. She said this is not the first time local companies and community members have banded together to help in a disaster.
“We had a tremendous, overwhelming, heartwarming group of volunteers. It wasn’t just one group, it was everybody. The people that didn’t get much damage went to help their neighbors. The wrestling team, the football team, the girls' track team, the girls' wrestling team, and their coaches, were doing sandbagging. People volunteered trailers, they were hauling them all over the city to people that were in need of them,” said Lundstrom.
Lundstrom said the volunteers personify South Dakota values.
“They are the best of us. The volunteers. They are the very best of us. I thank several people on Facebook on the pay-it-forward page that is quite huge still, they have reached out to everybody, they are. In a community you have your strife’s and complaints but the volunteers that came out to help people in need, they are the best of us,” said Lundstrom.
She said the efforts to recover, restore, and rescue are all lead by local volunteers. Lundstrom said despite the amount of water in Canton, she feels fortunate.
“My heart goes out to the communities over in Iowa, I mean, their whole town is underwater. At least we didn’t have that. We had streets underwater but we didn’t have a whole town underwater,” said Lundstrom.
