MALTA -- Malta residents are working to clean up the damage and bracing for more high water after severe floods that left a trail of destruction and waterlogged homes in Cassia County.
Undersheriff George Warrell said commissioners passed a disaster declaration Wednesday night in hopes of getting funding to combat the "county-wide" flooding.
"Cassia County is 2500-square miles, and it's pretty well underwater from one end of the county to the other," he said.
Jennifer Whitaker said she and her family had piled sandbags around her home in hopes of staving off the rising Raft River. It wasn't enough.
"It hit really fast," she said. "Sandbags just couldn't hold it anymore."
Floodwaters filled up her basement, and reached several inches deep in a storage room, two bedrooms and a den.
"We stayed up all night, and the water just kept coming in," she said. "It was like a waterfall."
By Thursday, the family had pumped out much of the water, leaving rooms full of river silt and damaged possessions.But Whitaker said she was grateful that her family was OK.
Malta has pulled together to help residents like Whitaker and her family, she said, with schoolchildren working "from morning to night" filing up sandbags and groups of people showing up to build retaining walls out of haybales and sandbags.
"We have such a great community, everyone was out here helping us," she said.
Chelsey Hutchison is among those working non-stop to help her neighbors, despite the flooding that is affecting her own property.
"The water is just breaching the river wherever it can get out and just heading for these houses," she said.
At least one of her her father-in-law's calves drowned in the high water, she said. Other cows were left to swim to higher ground. Hutchison said she's heard reports of other livestock lost in the flood, although a final accounting will have to wait until water recedes.
But in the midst of the chaos, Cassia County stepped up. People on dry ground took in the animals of their flooded neighbors, businesses donated food, and the entire town pitched in to divert water and pile up the sandbags that are being trucked in by the semi-load.
Donations are being accepted at Raft River High School, Hutchison said, and anyone who wants to help can send food and water for volunteers, straw or hay bales, or other supplies. Volunteers are gladly accepted as well, she said.
"Bring a shovel, bring some gloves, and bring some water boots," she said.
Although no one has been killed in the flooding, the Cassia County Sheriff's Office says they've had to respond to several incidents of cars getting stuck one flooded roads. Multiple roads are closed down in the area, and Warrell cautioned people against driving through flood waters - even if it doesn't look very deep.
"They get in it, and the water could be rising and you end up stuck or stalled out," he said.
Warrell said emergency responders are working to do as much as possible as high water continues to threaten the county.
"We're just filling bags and trying to do the best we can," he said.