To understand the breadth of the devastating flooding in southwestern Iowa you have to get above it.

Hovering in a small prop plane, the brown chaos of the Missouri River 5 miles out of its banks overtakes the normally green quilt of manicured rows ready for planting. Bright white gas tanks from just opened pitstops float like rubber duckies in a bathtub, and nearby silos, probably full of grain, lay knocked over like bowling pins. Abandoned cars wait for their owners on exposed sections of overpasses, and our pilot points to cows huddled on small patches of elevated ground.

Interstate highways disappear under water high enough to fill the deep end of a pool. During what should be the lunchtime rush, the four-lane road is silent, save for the light lapping of an inland tide.

But to understand the resolve of the people who live in southwestern Iowa, you have to come back down to earth. In the days after the water rose, regulars gathered at Glenwood’s Harvest Moon coffee shop to trade news of friends and neighbors and tell stories of recent sandbagging efforts.

Communities in this mostly rural area have shown each other so much love, said Iowa Rep. Jon Jacobsen, that each interaction feels like “Iowa nice on steroids.”

“In a small town like this, everyone knows someone who has lost everything,” said Paula Reeves, co-owner of Reeves Trucking in Silver City. “But we are safe. We have a home to go to, so I count my blessings.”

She knows many others are not so lucky.

In a section of the state where flooding seems a seasonal occurrence — and where residents are quick to compare waters to 1952, 1993 and 2011 — this spring’s deluge came fast and furious, locals said. And even though they understand the power of Mother Nature, these weather-worn residents want answers about why the water rose so quickly and why measures put in place to stop the currents failed — and they want to know before the spring thaw brings the possibility of more flooding.

“If somebody knew this higher up, and did not want to tell us,” Carol Vinton, a member of the Mills County Board of Supervisors, said before getting choked up, “we could have had two weeks of the farmers getting millions and millions of bushels of grain out. They could have found other storage. We could have sandbagged.

“We could've been so much better prepared than this hell within 48 (to) 72 hours,” she continued. “It just has got to get better.”

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds issued disaster proclamations in 43 counties so far, and she expects more as the waters linger.

This week’s historic flooding is a result of the perfect storm of weather anomalies coming together, officials said. The bitter cold this winter left grounds frozen and unable to soak up any of the heavy rain ushered in by last week’s bomb cyclone. Then recent warm weather caused snowmelt to push already swollen rivers and tributaries over their banks.

With warming trends set to continue, flooded areas could see new water — and levees, which officials say have either collapsed or been compromised from Council Bluffs to the Missouri state line, may erode further.

Exactly how much devastation will be left in this flood’s wake won’t be fully known until the waters recede, which isn’t likely to happen until later this week or next.

In this annual time of spring renewal, many locals said their town will pick itself up and rebuild. But as tears turn to resolve, residents will be left with big questions to weigh. When the last devastating flood happened only eight years ago, is there anything that can save your hometown?

'Trying to survive'

Worry built up in the pit of Laurin Kinser’s stomach as images of Nebraska’s flooding took over the news last week. On Friday, the 30-year-old’s angst was so high that she left work early to pack up on the off chance the water reached her house on the outskirts of Pacific Junction.

Within a day her greatest fears were realized when the sheriff drove up and told the family they had to leave.

On Sunday, from a safe distance, she and her boyfriend, Clint Oliphant, 45, watched the waters rush in, reaching the eves of their house.

“We’re lost,” she said. “We don’t know how to take it, to be honest. We still have to pay our mortgage and our homeowners’ insurance, and we don’t know how we are going to swing that and still pay to have a home to live in.”

Like Kinser, many people had a few hours heads up to grab whatever they could, while entire towns had no more than a handful of days to rally their residents.

In Missouri Valley, the waters rose so fast that people were stranded waiting for rescue from the Department of Natural Resources. An evacuation order from the mayor of Hornick was the only reason most of his residents got out safely.

Under siege from quickly rising water, small towns and Offutt Air Force Base alike called off furious efforts to supplement the levees and watched the river fill in its barriers like water in a bucket.

For many farmers, these floods couldn’t have come at a worse time, said Dan Erdmann, marketing officer with the agriculture nonprofit Farm Rescue. Grain elevators were full, and farmers had most likely just taken out loans to start the planting season. For ranchers, calving season is in full swing.

The unfortunate time of year is also intensified by recent trade disruptions, Reynolds said.

And in Pacific Junction, where the entire town of just fewer than 500 is under water that’s 10 feet high in some places, many of the local farmers don’t have flood insurance.

“There's a lot of this land that will not be touched this year just because it will not dry out,” said Richard Crouch, chairman of the Mills County Emergency Management Commission. “It’s going to take years for it to come back to a natural use on account of the amount of sand and debris that's left on it.”

After the 2011 flood, the Glenwood Community School District lost 153 kids who transferred out in eight weeks’ time, said Superintendent Devin Embry. Because that was a “flood event” — most damage was due to water seepage, which isn’t typically covered by insurance — the families decided they just couldn’t afford to rebuild.

Embry drove county roads with a local trooper over the weekend, assessing the damage to bus routes. Stopping at a local Casey’s to refuel, Embry spotted one of his high school students, who told the superintendent that his family lost everything.

“He just had no idea what to do, so I gave him my cellphone number and said, ‘Call me if you need anything,’” Embry said.

“If you think about this in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we are at the foundation right now,” he said. “We are just trying to survive.”

'Where's the Corps?'

Standing on what is normally an interstate, Joyce Flinn, Iowa’s director of emergency management, walked up to where the pavement gave way to water. The makeshift shoreline had been a football field away Monday morning, residents told her, but the water is creeping in.

Earlier that day, she cried watching drone footage of broken levees and flooded-out towns. In a 20-year career, it was just the second time she ever teared up. The first was in 2008, when a tornado ripped through a Boy Scout camp, killing four campers.

“It looks like an ocean out there,” she said. “You see stuff sticking out of it and you're trying to determine what that stuff is, and it's someone's life.

“So, it's my job to have my little bit of cry, get back at it and do my best to help them out.”

If the ire that existed in Mills County was any bellwether, these towns will make sure something is done. And their first target is the Army Corps of Engineers and its perceived lack of communication regarding the local levees.

“I was in D.C. just a couple of weeks ago and I just said our No. 1 concern is we've got to start working on these levees,” Vinton said. “You always talk about it and (you say), ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.’ But now the devastation is here.”

State Rep. David Sieck agreed, saying that what he hears most from his local supervisors is, “Where’s the Corps?”

“I mean they come out here, they look at us, (and they say) they are here just to take note,” he said.

In Hamburg, residents were angry because the Corps told them to either remove height from the levee that protected the southwest side of town or spend upwards of $5 million to build it to federal standards. Before the 2011 flood, the town had fortified the small mound using 8 feet of dirt from a local farmer’s field, and the makeshift levee held back the water.

“They felt that the town would have been fine if they hadn't been required to remove the levee that they put the time and money into,” Reynolds recounted as she promised to get answers for residents there.

“We are going to need significant assistance from the Corps, and we're going to need it today,” she said. “This can't be something that we have layers of bureaucracy and red tape.”

As Reynolds noted many times, not only is the recovery just beginning, but so is the spring thaw. On the Mississippi River, which she said thaws slower than the Missouri, Iowa has installed river gauges that model water movement and the state is monitoring them closely.

“What typically would be handled by the levee system that's in place, because they've been compromised, (it) could potentially be a difficult situation all through the spring and summer,” she said.

'I'll rise up'

My mother always told me to start with the bad news, and the reality is there is a lot of that in western Iowa.

But there is also a lot of good.

At Tuesday’s Glenwood Middle School talent show, kids with signs reading, “PJ Strong,” and, “We Are United,” encircled a student as she sang, “I’ll rise up, I’ll rise like the day, I’ll rise up, I’ll rise unafraid.”

Hundreds of water bottles have made their way to the school as surrounding districts host drives, and unaffected residents are posting messages on social media inviting those displaced into their homes for a hot shower or a warm meal.

Just before the flood hit, a deluge of volunteers helped Loess Hills Harley Davidson transport more than 400 motorcycles to higher ground. As of Tuesday, the store was completely underwater.

In Glenwood, the Grace United Methodist Church is serving three meals a day, and in Council Bluffs, the Salem Methodist Church is sheltering families with nowhere to go.

“The communities’ response has been overwhelming,” said Sharon Kroese, a volunteer who came from Branson, Missouri, to help. “I’ve seen great response to disasters in other states, but Nebraskans and Iowans are country folk who know how to stick together and offer help to their neighbors.”

At the Harvest Moon coffee house, barista Lacey Cochrane has been ushering those in need to places that can help or just offering words of encouragement.

Over the weekend, she joined hundreds of her neighbors to fill sandbags to protect the water treatment plant. They were told to bring their own lunch, but local businesses donated so much food they had to hunt down extra tables for a delivery of fresh pizza.

Cochrane brought along her 3-year-old son, who carried his snack in one hand and in the other empty bags to give to the older guys shoveling sand.

“I worked with an older lady who was slower,” she said. “I probably tied bags 4-to-1 to her, but no one cared.”

There was no segregation between Democrats and Republicans, rich and poor, country and town, Cochrane said, and no one complained.

“It was really at least one beautiful thing in this devastating time,” she said. “That’s what I love about small towns is that everyone is willing to help because it does take a village after something like this.”

Paula Reeves agreed as she stuck a straw in her coffee frappe and gathered up her coffee beans.

“We just have to keep moving forward,” she said. “We have to cry and then dry our eyes and get to work.

“But in country towns, that’s what we know how to do.”

COURTNEY CROWDER, the Register's Iowa Columnist, traverses the state's 99 counties telling Iowans' stories. You can contact her at (515) 284-8360 or ccrowder@dmreg.com. Follow her on Twitter @courtneycare.