When floodwaters began to rise through a Center Grove area neighborhood 10 years ago, emergency workers used Jean Clark’s driveway as a spot to drop off residents they had rescued from areas where the flooding was the worst.
Clark’s home at the intersection of Bluff Acres Drive and Mullinix Road sits a couple feet higher than some of her neighbors. As floodwater covered the streets and some of homes in the Bluff Acres neighborhood, her gravel driveway became an island.
Using boats, emergency workers would go to residents further west on Bluff Acres Drive, where flooding was its worst, dropping them off at Clark’s home before another boat would take them further away from the flood zone.
Jean Clark and her husband, Gerald Clark, purchased their home in 2004 after they had retired. They had previously lived in Indianapolis and were looking for a quieter place, which they found in the Bluff Acres neighborhood, southeast of the intersection of State Road 37 and Smith Valley Road, she said. They selected the neighborhood in part because one of her daughters lived down the street.
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“It was like I had died and gone to heaven,” Clark said.
When the floodwaters started rising in 2008, her husband was sitting out on the back porch watching. Clark preferred to stay inside. The rising waters were nerve wracking, she said.
“It scared me to death, because I can’t swim,” Clark said.
The floodwater was deep enough for her son-in-law, who lives a few doors down the street, to ride down the road in his boat.
Boats weren’t the only items floating down the street. Clark watched as a long line of plastic bins, which she guessed had come from a nearby grocery store, floated down the road in single file, along with tree branches and other debris.
Another Bluff Acres resident, Joanne Bailey, was at work when the flooding began. Since the car she had driven to work wasn’t going to be able to make it through the flooded streets, her son picked her up and brought her home in a sport-utility vehicle.
Her home on Mullinix Road, which also sits on higher ground, wasn’t in any danger of flooding, as the water only crept up a couple of feet on the driveway. They let several neighbors leave their cars in their driveway, along with a motorcycle in their garage.
The community has always been one where neighbors are willing to look out after each other, Bailey said.
The flood left the neighborhood drastically changed, as residents left homes were demolished, Clark said.
Johnson County purchased 22 homes in the neighborhood through a federal buyout program. Ten of those lots were located next to existing homes and are leased to the homeowner next door as an extended yard. The county planted trees on the other 12 lots, which adjoin each other near the entrance of the subdivision.
The neighborhood isn’t finished changing. The construction of Interstate 69 along State Road 37, with an interchange planned at Smith Valley Road, will drastically alter the area.
The flood is an experience Clark doesn’t want to go through again, but she has no plans to leave the community.
While she is hopeful that she never will have to, she does pay attention whenever it starts raining hard.
“People still get nervous,” Clark said.
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Johnson County did a buyout of homes that were damaged by the flood. Here is a closer look:
Total grant: $4.5 million
Where are the homes:
Bluff Acres: 22
Old Smith Valley: 13
Edinburgh: 1
How they are used now: The county worked out a deal with nearby landowners to lease the lots for $1 per year, and also planted trees in an area near the front of Bluff Acres where several homes were demolished.
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