Residents Along Chain O' Lakes Battling Flood Waters
UPDATED: 4/22/2013 10:25 a.m.
FOX LAKE -- Residents dealing with record flooding in Lake County are keeping a close eye on the Fox River on Monday.
The Fox is expected to crest on Monday, and hundreds of homes around the Chain O' Lakes are already flooded.
They are doing everything that can from making a bad situation even worse.
It's all about trying to stay ahead of the rising waters.
When it comes down to man vs. nature, people are determined to win, CBS 2's Susanna Song reports.
The Podborny family installed eight sump pumps and built a wall of sandbags around their home on Siloam Avenue.
So far, they have had only a few inches of water seep in and they feel pretty lucky.
The family has been working non-stop since last week to fill sandbags and keep their basement intact.
The Chain O' Lakes and Fox River flooding is one for the record books.
The river is expected to crest Monday just above the eight-foot mark set in 1960.
"It's bad. It's the worst I have seen, and we have flooded three times before," said Fox Lake resident Joe Kozlowski. "The worst part of this one is that it came up so fast."
Kozlowski and his girlfriend, Shannon Turk have been working around the clock, deploying sump pumps and sandbags to keep their home dry.
So far, only their crawlspace has water.
"It's very physical, it's very trying. It's sleepless nights because you have to watch the pumps constantly and you have to make sure the sandbags don't cave in," said Turk.
Grand Avenue in downtown Fox Lake had to be closed Sunday and most of Lakeland Plaza was under water.
About 3,200 homes along the Chain O' Lakes have flooded after last week's deluge.
The Knollwood subdivision in Fox Lake was probably one of the hardest hit areas and most people had either evacuated or threw up their hands.
Access was only available by boat.
Many residents had parked their cars on higher ground and were using boats to get from their homes to their cars so that they could go to work on Monday.
"You'd think you were living in Venice, Italy or something like that," one resident to WBBM Newsradio's Bernie Tafoya.
