Tour de Barb: Finale
Shrinking Cleveland, Ill., more than just a magnet for rising floodwaters

Font Size:

By Barb Ickes | Thursday, June 29, 2006 11:49 PM CDT | () comments

Barb Ickes/QUAD-CITY TIMES Jesse Marks, 12, climbs out of the Rock River on Thursday at his grandfather’s home in Cleveland, Ill., as Bryan LaGran watches from the dock. Much of the tiny Henry County community was bought out by the federal government because of chronic flooding but many residents remain.

CLEVELAND, Ill. — Those of us in the news business have been to this tiny river town for one reason: floods.

After the last big Rock River flood several years ago, the feds said they hoped to buy up and tear down just about every house in Henry County’s little Cleveland. I went Thursday expecting to see a ghost town. Not quite.

Any reporter who’s been in the Quad-Cities long enough has stood outside the Cleveland Quarry entrance, waiting with the sheriff and the local fire department volunteers as residents were hauled out of the flooded village by boat. If you’d been there more than once you couldn’t help wondering why the people stayed.

Many finally left in recent years. But many others never will.

In visiting the village for the first time when the place was dry, the guesswork about why people still live there vanished. In its place were Renae Rowell and her children, visiting Rowell’s parents, who moved to Cleveland when she was in junior high school. She now has high-school-age children of her own.

“All this empty space was full of houses,” she said, pointing to the vacant, park-like lots along the Rock River next to her folks’ house. “My kids absolutely love it here.

“My Dad’s not goin’ nowhere,” she added. “We take the kids boating — skiing, knee-boarding and tubing — so they love it out here.

“I have a beautiful country place (in Reynolds), but it’s not the same as being on the river.”

Splash! One of three kids, each in life jackets, sprang off Grandpa and Grandma’s dock and into the river. As they giggled and teased, Rowell hollered from the shore.

“It’s lunchtime, kids, and you’ve got to go get washed up,” she yelled. “Jesse, you go get the others down at the fishing hole.”

Lying on his back in the water, the 12-year-old floated downstream, kicking his legs absently and chatting to himself. On the shore, a medium-sized dog ran past, seemingly unbothered by the piece of broken chain that dragged behind.

As I walked away, I heard the boy in the water singing.

Need to get out more

The woman at the new-looking building on Wolf Road in Colona answered the door in her socks.

I couldn’t hide the surprise in hearing that the Henry County Emergency Services Center has been in that spot above Cleveland for almost four years. Reporters spend far too much time in the office.

More astonishing, though, was the sight just around the corner from a big, red fire truck.

There sat a shiny clean MedForce helicopter. It looked odd there —- parked atop an oversized pallet on the garage floor.

“The pilots land the helicopter on the pallet and then it’s pulled into the garage by this lawn tractor,” explained Kelli Miller, a full-time nurse at Genesis Medical Center, Illini Campus, and a part-time flight nurse aboard MedForce. “They seem to not have any problems landing on the little dock.”

I couldn’t back my car onto that dock.

The Quad-Cities is lucky to have MedForce. The helicopter crews’ response times average three to five minutes. Those minutes are golden to people who are seriously hurt.

MedForce responds far beyond Henry County. Just last weekend, Miller and others flew to Morrison, Ill., for a truck/train accident that critically injured a man.

Peeking inside the helicopter, I found it tough to imagine doing much of anything in such a small space, let alone saving lives. But Miller managed to intubate the badly hurt man, placing a tube in his airway to help him breathe while they brought him to a hospital.

“You’re transporting the worst of the worst,” she said. “The kids are usually too sick to be excited about riding in a helicopter, but, hopefully, they’ll think it’s cool later on.

“When we’re transporting people from hospital to hospital, like from here to Peoria, we always ask if they need medication for claustrophobia because it is tight in there,” she said.

But MedForce is about more than fast response times and well-trained medical staff. Many, many times the helicopters are called to help find people who are missing — on one of our rivers or on land.

“We do a lot of searches, mostly for bodies,” Miller said. “We found a young man who was suicidal and had wandered off into a cornfield.

“The pilots are busy looking out for trees and power lines, so it’s our job to search,” she said. “When we’re responding to a scene, we assume primary medical care upon arrival.”

There are some awesome people hiding right out in the open.

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com.