Rain floods church basement, cancels program

In the days of Noah, God promised not to flood the entire earth again.

He didn't promise not to flood the basement of the United Methodist Church of Le Mars.

That's exactly what happened Monday night when the pouring rain hit.

Water as deep as 3 inches covered the basement floor, and although volunteers scrambled to get the water out, the resulting mess caused church members to cancel a children's program for the month of April.

The flooding in the basement was first noticed by members of a Boy Scout troop that meet there about 7 p.m., according to Pastor Jason Larson.

"We started calling people in," Larson said. "We had about a dozen volunteers that came down with shop vacs. We were tripping breakers because we had so many shop vacs running."

The volunteers worked about three hours and ended up pulling up the carpet in the main room.

"This is our main kids area," Larson said, standing in a room of exposed flooring and tiles.

"We're cancelling our Wednesday night kids program for April" Larson said. "We can't have 60 kids running through here with it all torn apart."

The church plans to have a professional check the room for possible mold growth now that the water is gone.

"With kids, we don't want to chance that," Larson said.

They plan to refloor the room.

A room with several computer towers sitting on the floor had the deepest water, about 3 inches. Larson said they'll wait until the computers are fully dry to check if they work.

This is the first time the church has flooded, Larson added.