GRANITE CITY, Ill. — Ben Hollis has a schedule at his Granite City business, Duke Bakery. The delivery truck comes at 5:30 a.m. to stock display cases before they flip on the flashing neon "open" sign at 6.
But 5:15 Monday morning he got a call from the business owner next door who said they were taking on water.
"I wasn't really thinking too much, 'Eh, there's a little water,'" Hollis said of his initial reaction. "It was much worse than I thought it was going to be. When I saw trucks going through and you got water over the tops of big pickup trucks... you got a problem."
The traffic problems started almost immediately. Cars were stranded on Granite City streets with their brake lights on and water up to the window.
Sky5 video showed a taxi driver sitting atop his cab with water all around him.
Though you may expect the flooded cars to serve as a warning to other motorists, some drivers were undeterred plowing through high water until the reached the other side, backed up to the higher ground, or found themselves stranded too.
One Granite City couple walked through the high-water with the marks on their pants to shows a depth of approximately four feet.
Others, like Brandy Holthaus, called into work because the water blocking their way.
"All 25 of my patients had to be canceled this morning," Holthaus, a nurse practitioner, said.
Also canceled: repairs to Brandy Holthaus's basement which she was clearing out after it was flooded two weeks ago.
"We had to take out all the drywall, the insulation, all the wood because it was molding from the last high-water we had here. Now we have it again," Holthaus said.
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