AVA, Mo. -- Flash flooding proved to be a big problem for many communities on Tuesday.
Lisa Richards, who lives rural Douglas County, hasn't seen this much rain, well, since she doesn't remember when.
"A long time," she said with a laugh.
The man driving by her house off Highway T didn't see it at all.
"He was coming in from work and said the next thing he knew he was in the ditch," his mother-in-law said, watching the car being towed out of the pond in the middle of the roadway.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol and Missouri Department of Transportation came to rescue his water-logged vehicle but it was Richards who rescued him.
"I didn't know it was him for sure, and I said 'Brad?' He said 'yeah.'"
Brad is wheelchair-bound. Richards pulled his chair out of the backseat and then "I held it down while he got in it and started pulling him out and the Highway Patrol came and helped pull him the rest of the way out."
Minus the chair, she's done as much before.
The problem on Tuesday on Highway T is you can't see the water until you're in it. There are so many leaves and it's so dark that the water is the same color as the road.
"There was a lady who didn't see the water and hydroplaned, went in the garden, took out a fence post and a pine tree and hit an old truck sitting out there," Richards remembered from years previous.
Tuesday, MoDOT went to work on the clogged drain that created the bathtub.
"The leaves plugged it up," the worker said as he dug with a shovel under the water.
Really, it's a culvert unprepared for this much rain at one time -- rain that Richards was happy to see just about everywhere except in the middle of her busy highway and nearly topping her friend's car.
"We got him some clothes and he's all dry and warm and toasty now."
