SILVANA — “Last night, we got hit with flooding, heavy rains, hail and wind,” Silvana Fire Chief Keith Strotz said Nov. 18. “It was much more than was predicted. To have all four things in the same night is a huge challenge.”

The Silvana Fire District fielded 15 calls from Nov. 17 through the morning of the next day. Fortunately, they’d already added an extra eight personnel to their regular night shift number of two responders.

“We had two inches of hail on the freeway at around three in the morning,” Strotz said, noting that 14 cars went off the road as a result, in addition to the three motorists who needed to be rescued from flood waters along Pioneer Highway, both east and west of Silvana. “They drove into high waters, and their engines died, we went to retrieve them.”

Strotz was heartened that locals availed themselves of the fire district’s sandbags, even as he acknowledged that the district could do a better job of preparing people for such situations.

“The public needs to be educated not to drive through water,” Strotz said. “Especially when we’ve got floodwaters in downtown Silvana and across Island Crossing, hail between two interstate exits, and wind and rain everywhere, it makes our jobs a lot easier.”

While Strotz insisted Nov. 17 was “no record flood,” the weather kept his crews working all night long, and as of press time, they remain without power, with only a generator to keep a single fire station running.