DAVENPORT, Iowa — Downtown Davenport is trying to pick up the pieces after a HESCO barrier breached -- flooding nearly a dozen businesses. Tonight, history has been made as business owners in downtown Davenport continue to tirelessly fight the flooded waters.
It's now day 2 of clean up for Davenport businesses. Luckily, volunteers from all over are still coming out to help.
John McDermott is a familiar face among the volunteers.
"It was pretty heartbreaking when you came down here when it first broke," McDermott said.
Owner of Paradigm, Kelli Grubbs, said McDermott has been helping save her business since the night the levee broke.
"Nobody's organizing them," Grubbs said. "They're just out of the goodness of their heart are looking to fit in wherever help is needed."
And that is exactly what McDermott has been doing -- stopping at whatever business that looks like it could use his help.
"Once you kind of get to a paused stop, you kind of take a breath and say 'who else needs help?'," McDermott said.
He said he has learned from each business he has helped, passing his knowledge on to the next.
"(If) that expertise - or whatever you wanna call it - makes it somewhere else we can save a lot," McDermott said. "The failure of the wall, it`ll bring the downtown community closer together so it'll be worth something."
While this year's flood has officially broken the record set back in '93, the volunteers working today emphasized that this flood feels worse simply because of how fast the river levels rose.