Minnesota High School Football Team Helps Evacuate Care Center Residents During Flood

When flash flooding struck New Richland, Minnesota, over the weekend, members of the local high school football team found themselves performing a much more important job than anything they'd been asked to do on the field.

Players from New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva High School helped pull a pontoon carrying residents from the New Richland Care Center to safety before other members of the team helped them get settled inside the school gym.

Senior quarterback Brooks Gilliland was among the players helping in the gym while teammates assisted with the evacuation.

“It felt great. It was amazing to see our whole football team step in and kind of take charge in a way and be willing to do anything,” Gilliland said.

36 Residents Had to Be Evacuated

According to Kare 11 News, the residents assisted by the NRHEG football team were among 36 residents who had to be evacuated from the New Richland Care Center. Center administrator Bob Johannsen told Kare 11 that he got a call at 3 a.m. informing him that the center was flooding. By 6:30 a.m., the first group of residents were being evacuated.

Johannsen said that when flood conditions worsened, the facility could no longer get its buses back to the building. That's when the community, including the the NRHEG football players provided their assistance.

"There was a pontoon that we had and we kind of floated that out to the Care Center to get patients out, a bunch of different supplies and all that stuff," Fynn Baumann, a senior football player at NRHEG, told Kare 11.

The players spent more than two hours pushing the pontoon back and forth from the care center to the high school until the evacuation of all of the residents was complete.

NRHEG Students Help Community Respond to Flooding

And the football players weren't the only students pitching in.

Other NRHEG students helped with sandbagging, removing water and other cleanup around New Richland as residents and emergency crews responded to the flooding.

Repeated thunderstorms dumped nearly nine inches of rain on the area, overwhelming nearby Boot Creek and sending water through homes and businesses. The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that approximately 80% of homes in New Richland sustained damage.

The city declared a state of emergency as residents, emergency crews and volunteers dealt with the aftermath. No flood-related injuries had been reported as of Monday.

"Our students really stepped up," Meihak said.

Panthers Return to Field After Flooding

NRHEG's game against Southland was postponed on Saturday because of the flooding. The Panthers finally returned to the field Monday night, losing 32-20 to Southland won.

It wasn't the result NRHEG wanted, but the Panthers' most important contribution of the weekend had already come well before kickoff.

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