OCONTO, WI (WTAQ) – The city of Oconto is drying out after a storm Monday sent the Oconto River out of banks and into the streets.
Earlier this week the situation was dire when the city had to declare a flood emergency. Many roads were blocked.
“We still have a few streets that have some significant flooding on it. But, in all, things are much better than they were”
City administrator Sara Perrizo says there were some volunteer evacuations but nothing approaching a mandatory level.
Still, there’s lots of property damage being sorted through.
Perrizo says the ice shoves that helped block the river from flowing into the bay continue to be an issue.
“We did make a decision to bring in MJB Construction with a boom, to break up some of the ice and that seemed to help.”
But the aggressive effort doesn’t end there.
“We’re bringing in a barge from Sturgeon Bay to break up the rest of the ice and try to get everything to flow out.”
Perrizo says while the level of damage was rare, they can’t take any chances. There’s a lot of winter left for flooding to occur and keeping the extra equipment nearby makes sense.
