The smell hits before you even get down the stairs
If you're reading this, you've probably already been down there. The carpet squishes. There's a waterline on the drywall you didn't put there. Maybe it's an inch of standing water, maybe it's six. Either way, the first hour or two after you find it matters more than almost anything you do afterward.
Springfield basements flood for a handful of predictable reasons. Heavy spring storms dump two or three inches of rain in an evening and the ground, already saturated from a wet March, has nowhere to send it but toward the nearest foundation crack. Older homes around Rountree, Delaware Town, and the near north side often sit on foundations poured before anyone worried much about drainage. Newer builds out toward Ozark and Nixa usually have better grading, but a clogged sump pump or a failed check valve during a hard rain will still put water in the basement just as fast.
What to pull out first, and why order matters
Anything porous that touched the water needs to come out before it dries in place, because once carpet padding, cardboard boxes, or upholstered furniture dry, they lock in whatever bacteria and mold spores were in that water. Wet drywall and insulation are next. Drywall wicks water upward well past the visible line, often a foot or more above where the water actually stood, so cutting it out early stops that spread.
Start with what's easiest to lose without a second thought: waterlogged cardboard, ruined carpet, soaked particleboard furniture. Set those aside as a first load. Photograph everything before it leaves the house if you plan to file an insurance claim. Then move to structural materials, wet drywall, baseboards, soaked subfloor if you have a finished basement.
This is usually where people realize they need somewhere to put all of it fast. A flooded basement generates more debris than a normal trash pickup can handle in any reasonable time, and wet material sitting in a garage or driveway for a week starts smelling and growing mold of its own. A dumpster sized for the job, dropped in the driveway or street, is usually the difference between clearing a basement in two days versus two weeks.
More on this from What To Pull Out First After A Basement Floods.
What Ozarks humidity does if you wait
Southwest Missouri summers are humid enough that a wet basement won't dry on its own, even with the water gone. Mold can start growing within 24 to 48 hours in the kind of heat and humidity this region gets from May through September. A basement that flooded on a Tuesday and doesn't get materials removed until the following week is very likely dealing with visible mold by the time anyone starts cleanup.
Run a dehumidifier and fans as soon as the standing water is out, even before you've finished pulling debris. It won't fix everything, but it slows the clock while you're hauling material out.
What you can check yourself
You can reasonably assess and remove: loose debris, furniture, rugs, boxes, anything not attached to the structure. You can check whether the water came from a surface source, storm runoff or a failed sump pump, versus a sewer backup, which smells different and is a health hazard requiring different handling entirely. You can look at the foundation walls for the actual crack or gap where water is entering, which matters for preventing round two.
You can also gauge how far water wicked up the drywall by pressing on it. If it's soft or bulging, that section needs to come out regardless of how the paint looks.
Where it stops being a homeowner job
If the water came from a sewer backup, stop and call a professional before touching anything. That's contaminated water and it's not worth the exposure. If you're seeing mold that's already spread beyond a small patch, if the basement supports load-bearing walls with visible cracking, or if you're dealing with knob-and-tube wiring in an older Springfield home that got wet, those are jobs for someone licensed, not a weekend project.
For everything else, the physical work of clearing a flooded basement is mostly about speed and volume, getting wet material out of the house before it starts causing more damage than the flood itself did. That part, most homeowners can manage with the right dumpster and a few days of steady work.