He decides “Road Closed” sign means “Go Around”

By Gary Dickson, Editor – Siouxland Observer

One of the main messages we’ve heard repeatedly the last few days during the heavy rains and flooding here in Siouxland is “Don’t drive into water-covered roadways.” Another is “Don’t go around “Road Closed” barriers or signs. They are there for a purpose: to keep drivers of vehicles safe. In other words, to keep people from driving off of roads that might have washed out due to heavy rains, rock slides or flooding.

Unfortunately, not everyone heeds the warnings. Safety statistics show that a high percentage of drowning deaths occur to people in their cars. They drive on water-covered roads where they can’t see how deep they are and end up getting swept into flooded waterways while in their vehicles.

The slideshow photos below show a case of a person who was lucky in some respects but exhibited a lack of common sense when he chose to ignore the road closed signs and go around the barriers on the road that skirts the south side of the soccer fields inside Riverside Park Monday evening.

I was standing on the hill just downstream from the Missouri River Boat Club at the park taking photos of the flooding when someone pointed to the bright red Dodge Challenger making its way through the water-filled road below us. People started yelling at him to stop and go back, but he kept going slowly until his car stalled.

This caused the group of 15 or so onlookers to laugh. Several people started taking photos with their cell phones. I started taking photos with my Nikon DSLR. No one on the hill offered to help the driver, probably because of his foolish behavior in attempting to drive through the water.

Eventually, a young man, somewhere in his early twenties, wearing a florescent green t-shirt with a Coca-Cola logo on it emerged from the car. He was barefoot, probably because he had wisely removed his shoes before exiting the car, I suppose. He got out and looked at the bright red, (dare I still say Muscle Car?) sitting helplessly in the Big Sioux overflow.

Maybe he thought if he stared at it long enough it might roar to life and creep out of the water by itself. But nothing magical like that happened to my disappointment. So he went around back and popped the trunk and disappeared. I kept waiting for the trunk lid to close because I thought he just might have crawled in there and hidden until the police and/or wrecker came to get him out as he was too embarrassed to look at the crowd on the hill and on the sidewalk.

But I was disappointed again. There would be no hiding, just as there was no magic act. Instead, I think he must have been looking for a tool . . . or a gun. Whatever he was looking for he appeared back from around the trunk empty-handed – at least as far as I could tell. The young man opened the door and unlatched his hood and proceeded to monkey around underneath the hood in the engine compartment.

I can’t recall whether or not he got back in his car and tried to start it, but he probably did, as that would make sense, especially if his distributor was wet. But I don’t really know if they have distributors in these newer cars. Hell, I didn’t even know if that was a newer car. Anyway, it could have had a multifizzmogactic fluxometer under the hood that got wet for all I know. And maybe for all that driver knew as well.

But it turned out help was on the way. Two women who were sitting in an SUV in the parking lot took pity on the poor fool and decided to come to his aid. They sloshed through the waters of the over-the-bank Big Sioux and over to the Challenger which was in a challenging position.

I thought I should tell them that the City of Sioux Falls and the Town of Hawarden had both been dumping their sewage into the Big Sioux for at least the last two days and that they should be sure to get various shots after splashing around in the water. But I didn’t. I think I forgot.

Anyhow, the three of them worked on the car for about 10 minutes or so. One woman disappeared. I think she was inside the car trying to start it on command from the car’s owner and the other woman who were looking at the engine and trying to figure out what to do to get it to start. She was either behind the wheel or in the trunk because I couldn’t see her from my vantage point. I mean, she was there beside the car with the other two, and then she wasn’t. So I’m hoping for the best for her.

After about 15 minutes the surviving woman with the green shirt and the car’s owner were just standing there looking at the car’s engine. The owner was holding his wrist, sort of like somebody does when they pray. In fact, maybe they were saying a prayer. I hoped it was about the car and not the other woman, who by this time I was worried might be somewhere underneath the car.

But my worries were soon proved to be for naught when the other woman emerged out of the driver’s side opening. I still breathed a sigh of relief, let me tell you.

The two women smiled, shook their heads and waded back through the waters to their SUV in the parking lot. The sun was starting to set even more in the west over I-29 and Dakota Dunes and I still had to try to get over to the Military Road bridge in Riverside to see how the railroad bridge was doing.

As I walked back to my vehicle sitting high and dry in the parking lot, I could hear a woman behind me walking with her teenage son telling him, “I don’t ever want to find out you’ve pulled a stunt like that guy in the red car!”