The Highway 61 Bluff Corridor
Homer runs along the narrow shelf between the Mississippi and the bluffs southeast of Winona. It is a beautiful place to live and a demanding one to keep dry, because there is very little flat ground between the water on one side and several hundred feet of hillside on the other.
What Happened Here In August 2007
On 18 and 19 August 2007 southeastern Minnesota took the heaviest rainfall in state history. Winona County was at the centre of it. Five people died in this county alone, and the region absorbed around $179 million in damage.
Along this corridor the story was not just rising water. It was hillsides letting go. Mudslides closed roads across Winona County, dozens of routes were impassable from a combination of high water, downed trees and slope failure, and the Fairway Woods apartment complex on Homer Road took water. Damage occurred well outside the mapped 100 year floodplain, in places whose owners had been told they were on dry land.
Why Slope Matters More Than Floodplain Maps
A floodplain map tells you about the river. It says nothing about what a saturated hillside above your house will do after fourteen hours of rain. On bluff toe property in Homer the risk that actually shows up is runoff arriving from the uphill side, carrying soil with it, and burying window wells and doorways before it enters the building.
What We See On Homer Properties
Uphill foundation walls under lateral pressure during heavy rain. Silt and debris blocking drainage that worked fine last year. Culverts and driveway crossings run past capacity, sending water toward the house rather than past it. Basements taking water through window wells rather than through cracks.
The mud is what separates a Homer job from a town job. Silt laden runoff is not clean water. Once it is inside a finished space it contaminates carpet and pad, packs into subfloor seams, and has to be removed rather than dried in place.
Response On The Corridor
Highway 61 is the only practical route in and out, so during a serious weather event access is the limiting factor rather than equipment. We will give you a straight arrival window rather than a number we cannot meet, and we would rather tell you the road is closed than pretend otherwise.
While you wait, shut the water off at the main if the source is internal, kill power to affected circuits, and photograph everything including the mud line on the wall. If a slope above your property has moved, stay out of the building until someone competent has looked at it.
Once on site the contractor identifies the water category first, because silt runoff and river water are both treated as contaminated. Extraction, material removal, cleaning and then structural drying follow in that order. For heavily contaminated events see sewage backup cleanup.
Call (507) 698-9249 for Homer and the Pleasant Valley properties.
