Fanestil Meats has canceled its second shift today and tomorrow due to rising water around the plant.
“Here we are at Fanestil Island again!” said Jan Smoots, co-owner of the plant just south of Emporia.
The description was apt. As of late Tuesday morning, parts of Kansas Highway 99 south of town had already been washed over and the road was expected to be closed soon . Meanwhile, the areas next to the highway — including Fanestil’s — had been turned into swamps at best and lakes at worst.
“It’ll be a lot worse come tonight,” said co-owner Dan Smoots.
Dan and Jan Smoots and their employees are used to it by now. Some years, there may be as many as two or three floods. In others, it may stay as dry as a bone. In 1998, an exceptionally bad one brought 14 inches of water inside the plant. And one Fanestil’s worker died in the now-historic flood of ‘51, when his boat hung up on a sagging telephone line and was capsized.
By now, the plant has a regular drill. When the waters start getting high, the workers stop what they’re doing and drive their cars into town, to park at the Commercial Street Reeble’s Country Mart. Then they’re taken back to the plant by truck — a very big truck.
“These are the bigger trucks like the state uses for pilot cars,” Dan Smoots said. “We bring them in that way until the water gets to a point where cars can drive safely.”
The other thing the plant does is watch the Web carefully. Web sites for Tulsa Water Control, the National Weather Service and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers keep the plant updated on how far the river’s rising and when it’s time to worry.
“We pretty much know what’s going to happen and when it’ll catch up with us,” Dan Smoots said. “As long as the information we get is good information.”