By Mitch Smith
The rising floodwaters stopped just sort of the home where Henry Red Cloud and his family rode out the storm, but other buildings on their property including their solar power business were inundated.
Pine Ridge, S.D. — Ella Red Cloud-Yellow Horse, (click here) marooned for days by a blizzard and then a flood, needed to get out. Supplies at her house were running low. She had come down with pneumonia. She had a chemotherapy appointment to keep.
But her long driveway was blocked by mountains of mud — impassable even for an ambulance or a tractor.
So Ms. Red Cloud-Yellow Horse, 59, set off toward the road on foot. She fell repeatedly, almost got swept away in the current of a creek, and became stuck in the mud. Finally, more than an hour later, she made it the half-mile to the highway where she was picked up.
“I couldn’t breathe,” she said, “but I knew I needed to get to the hospital.”...
