What is worrying you: after a flood

After a flood: well, septic and the house

After a flood, leave the well pump off, don’t drink or wash with well water¹, and hold off using the septic until water in the soil field is lower than water around the house². Go back in daylight³.

Start outside, in daylight, looking at the house from the street before anyone goes in.

Updated November 4, 2026, Midlands House Walk

A smell of gas or propane ends the visit. Get away from the house, using no switches or phones indoors, then call 911 and the gas company or propane supplier from outside. Never touch power while standing in water³.

Heap of wet carpet and cardboard at the curb of a brick ranch, volunteers behind — Soaked carpet and household debris piled in front of a brick ranch in a Columbia neighborhood after the October 2015 flood.

Aerial view of brown water covering a street and lower yard below a large house — A large house just above brown water covering the yard and street, Columbia, October 5, 2015. Water near a house can still have reached its well or field.

How high it came

Look for: Find the highest mark on the yard, the foundation and any well head. Compare it with where your tank and field lie.
What it tells you: Dry floors don’t clear the yard. A well or field under water needs its own check even if the house stayed dry.

Wooden pump shed with a shingled roof beside a metal pipe under pine trees — A small pump house with a well pipe. If water came up to a shed like this, the pump stays off until a contractor has looked. AI-generated picture.

The well

Look for: Check whether water reached the well head or pump. EPA says wells over 10 years old or under 50 feet deep are likely contaminated even with no apparent damage¹.
What it tells you: Don’t turn on the pump, because of the shock risk. A well or pump contractor is the right person to disinfect a drilled, driven or bored well, followed by a bacteria test 7 to 10 days later¹. See the flooded well stop.

Layer of silt across a road and yard edge with fences lying flat and a sign down — Silt across a yard edge, with fences knocked flat, after the October 2015 flood in the Forest Acres community, Columbia.

The tank and the field

Look for: Look for silt around your lids and over the field, and keep vehicles off the wet field².
What it tells you: Most tanks aren’t damaged, though they can fill with silt. Pumping in flooded or saturated ground can float a tank, and only trained specialists should clean or repair one². Sand and clay explains how your soil drains.

Stripped room with bare studs, an empty window frame and buckets on the floor — A room stripped to the studs after a flood in Belfry, Kentucky, not here. Porous material that can’t be dried is what ends up gone.

Inside the house

Look for: If water still stands inside or has reached outlets, stay out, and leave a breaker alone if you would have to wade to reach it. Once it is clear, check floors, walls and anything porous. On septic, clean up floodwater without dumping it into a sink or toilet².
What it tells you: CDC’s marks: dry within 24 to 48 hours, and discard porous items that can’t be dried³. Sewage or contaminated water calls for a professional, and so does mold beyond 10 square feet⁴. Don’t paint over it.

What happened here in 2015?

The National Weather Service counts October 1 to 5, with 10 to 20 inches falling from Columbia southeast across the eastern Midlands. Columbia Metro Airport set a one-day record of 6.71 inches, and dams failed and culverts and pipes washed out⁵. It was not a 1000-year rain everywhere, and flood recurrence differs from rain recurrence⁶.

Yours to do

Wear rubber boots, gloves and goggles if there may be sewage in the water³; they do not protect you from electric shock, so stay out of water near power.
Use another water source until the well has been tested.
On city water, follow your utility’s words. Advisory and notice mean different things.
Report any washouts of pipe or road you see to the utility.

For a licensed pro

Well or pump contractor for the flooded well.
Septic specialists for the tank, once the ground has dropped.
Under-house water and sewage: read water under the house, stay at the hatch, and bring someone in.