WAITE PARK -- A beloved local restaurant is recovering after flooding forced people to evacuate.

Anton’s Restaurant in Waite Park experienced a flash flood around 7:30 p.m. on Saturday night thanks to an ice dam on the Sauk River.

The quickly rising river flooded out the parking lot and every room inside of the restaurant, but within a couple of hours, the water was already receding.

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Patty Gaetz is married to one of the restaurant's owners. She says the building luckily only sustained water damage.

Our front yard is full of ice blocks and huge snow blocks and branches. We're fortunate that none of that pushed through the building, that our only damage was water damage.

Anton’s is built in a low-lying area and has flooded in the past, but Gaetz says this is the first time they have not had any warning or time to prepare.

We're no stranger to flooding. We flooded in '97, 2001, and 2009, and we know how to prepare for that and we know how to be informative to our community, and our customers, and our staff, but this last night...we've never experienced anything like this.

The family has already started the clean-up process and says they will reopen the restaurant as soon as they can.

Nobody was hurt in the flood.

 

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