Derek and Stephanie Slaughter went through boxes piled up outside of their storage unit near the Neosho River and State Street in Iola on Wednesday afternoon hoping they had picked out all of their sentimental and valuable possessions.
With rain forecast to hit the area mid-afternoon and go well into the night, water levels were expected to surpass flood stages of 2007.
Mostly, we are trying to find pictures and things like that. Things that cant be replaced. After that, we are mainly looking for all our electronics, Derek said.
The couple had driven by the storage facility on Tuesday and noticed others emptying out their units. With the exception of the Slaughter family, the business looked like a ghost town, with the doors on several lockers left partly cracked, revealing barren quarters.
We are going to take what we can to a friends house and store it upstairs and hope it doesnt get completely flooded here, Stephanie said. We hope it isnt as bad as what they are saying, but we thought we should grab what we could just in case.
Neither had experienced a flood before. Derek has been in the area for eight months, while Stephanie has lived in Iola for five years.
No, we were not around the last time it flooded, Stephanie said. We have heard stories about it, but never experienced one. We just hope everyone stays safe.
