Jace Kully and Jake Tessman
The several inches of rain and snow over the past few weeks have flooded lakes, homes, and towns across Nebraska. Hastings High School juniors, Jake Tessman, Jace Kully, and Noah Michalski decided that they could jump in on the flood relief by collecting water, clothing, and cleaning supplies and then taking them to neighbor towns. In a matter of days, they had 125 cases of water and plenty of other donations from people more than willing to help.
The boys all felt the urge to help even though they weren’t personally affected by it. They knew that anything they did would help in some way.
“It’s in our own backyard, our own state, and some of these towns no more than an hour away. It’s crazy to be so close to something like that and decide to not do anything about it,” Tessman said.
Several towns like Fremont, Columbus, and Dannebrog have experienced record flooding, and even more, have been forced to evacuate their homes. Although the flooding has gone down, it will take years to repair the damage done. Many people have shared photos of the flooding but it doesn’t nearly have as much of an impact as seeing livestock stranded and trees uprooted in person.
“Honestly I think what surprised us the most was the sheer devastation. I mean, you see everything on TV and the news and you kinda just think to yourself, ‘wow, that’s bad’ but you don’t truly get a feel for it until you’re there,” Kully said.
Even though the process of getting donations went very smoothly, it was harder to transport because of the closed roads and the National Guard directing the traffic.
“The most difficult thing was finding our way into some of the towns because of the roadblocks and just having to transport that much water,” Michalski said.
This project helped them to realize that they liked giving to others who were less fortunate, and they will be doing something to benefit the community sometime in the future.
“I think we all became a little bit more thankful for what we have because you just never really know when it could be taken away,” Kully said.
