When Jackson County was hit with widespread damage in this weekend's flooding, the county judge executive says the flood waters moved in fast, giving people little time to react and leaving people stranded in their vehicles and homes.

I was actually at the courthouse doing some paperwork at the time that rain started, you know, within ten minutes of when it started, I looked at the window and the streets were flooded.

I mean, it just amazing how fast, I go to the McKee Baptist Church, my own church, the pastor, I talked to him and he had left the church and went home about ten minutes before I called him.

And I called him up and said, you, you're the church is flooded.

And he didn't.

He just couldn't believe it.

Even so, that was so sudden.

I don't think anybody could prepare for that.

We didn't have time to do any, anything really, to make a huge difference in the outcome of it.

At that time, many cars were inundated.

We have cruisers.

That's like like 8 or 9 cars, a cruiser, police cars that were parked behind the administrative office in the corner.

And I've never seen flooding.

And they, they have, extensive damage to them from the flood that occurred.

There were several people trapped.

We had, as far as I recall, at least nine water rescues.

But we had teams come from counties around us that helped us in those areas, and we were able to get those people out safely.

Late in the afternoon Saturday evening, we found there were some kids that were had been in a Bible school at a church, and there they were blocked and couldn't get get back out.

So around 9:00 Saturday night, we were able to get them out safely and get them back to dry land and back to their families.

We had several people who were trapped in their cars in the roadways during the day, and we it took us a few hours to get those all straight down and everyone that was out safely.

I'm very concerned about the two bridges that we haven't been able to repair quickly, because there are some families that live across on the other side of those bridges that are somewhat blocked in, but we're working on that.

We they're aware that we're working on it, and we're trying our best to accommodate them in whatever way we can.

You actually reached out to those people as they needed food brought to their house or, or any emergency situations that we would try to address those things as they come up to make sure that they're as comfortable as I can be, and we're going to keep working as quickly as possible to get at least a temporary bridge in place so that they can be can successfully cross some and go back to a normal routine as much as can.

But it's really important for the public to know that we're really working hard to bring things back to normal in our county.

It's also important for them to know how many agencies, how many different groups have called in and offered assistance to our county to get things back in order as quickly as possible.

And, you know, we want them to know how much we appreciate what what everyone's doing, because without their assistance, we would have a long, hard road ahead of us to get this back in order.

But with their assistance, we're quickly getting things back under control.

And I feel confident that very, very soon that we will be able to say that we have overcome the situation and we're now moving forward.