“We all know, living between two rivers, that something like this can happen,” said Heather Garcia, who has not been able to return to her flooded house since Monday when she fled with her son and dog and pretty much nothing else. “But it’s our home. And we just keep going. I’m not really sure how to explain it.”

John Hayes, another resident, was more pessimistic: “I have a gut, bad feeling that this might be the end of this little town.”

Riverfront living in Hamburg has seemed more precarious than ever since 2011. That’s where the beloved levee came in.

The town had long been protected by an approved levee as high as 18 feet designed to block floodwaters. But when still higher waters were threatening the town in 2011, residents and the United States Army Corps of Engineers topped off the levee with a cobbled-together emergency addition: eight or nine more feet of protection.