NNorth Sioux City, SD – Flooding in the U.S. Midwest killed at least two people, collapsed a railroad bridge and sent water around a dam on Monday after days of heavy rain that forced hundreds of people to evacuate or be rescued from rising waters.
An Illinois man died Saturday while trying to get around a barricade in Spencer, Iowa, Sioux City’s KTIV-TV reports. reported Monday.
The Little Sioux River swept away his truck, according to a Clay County Sheriff’s Office news release provided to the sheriff’s office. Authorities found the vehicle among trees but were unable to recover his body until Monday due to dangerous conditions.
At least one person has died in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem said, without providing details.
Flooding brought more misery to parts of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota during a vast, stubborn wave of heat. In some flood-hit communities, temperatures on Monday afternoon approached 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit).
More than 3 million people live in flood-affected areas, from Omaha, Nebraska, to St. Paul, Minnesota. The storms dumped large amounts of rain Thursday through Saturday, with up to 18 inches falling south of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, according to the National Weather Service.
Places that didn’t get as much rain still had to deal with excess water moving downstream. More rain is forecast, and many streams may not peak until later this week as flood waters slowly drain through a network of rivers into Missouri and Mississippi. Missouri will peak in Omaha on Thursday, said Kevin Low, a hydrologist with the weather service.
“I’ve never had to evacuate my house,” said Hank Howley, a 71-year-old resident of North Sioux City, South Dakota, as she joined others on a Big Sioux River levee where the railroad bridge collapsed. one day earlier. “We are at the highest point in the city. But what good is that when the rest of the city is flooded? It makes me nervous.”
The bridge connected North Sioux City, South Dakota, with Sioux City, Iowa, and collapsed into the Big Sioux River around 11 p.m. Sunday, officials said. Images published in local media showed a large span of the steel bridge partially submerged as floodwaters rushed over it.
There were no reports of injuries in the collapse. The bridge’s owner, BNSF Railway, stopped operating it as a precaution during the floods, said spokeswoman Kendall Sloan. The railroad said the bridge was only used by a few trains a day and it did not expect the rerouting to have a significant impact.
The Big Sioux River stabilized Monday morning at about 45 feet, more than 7 feet above the previous record, Sioux City Fire Marshal Mark Aesoph said.
In North Sioux City, the South Dakota Department of Transportation built a berm Sunday night on Interstate 29 to contain flooding, temporarily blocking the main route. In other areas where the interstate remained open, water invaded the road. Howley, who has lived there for 33 years, said he has a growing concern about more frequent severe flooding around I-29.
Flooding over the days has damaged roads and bridges, closed or destroyed businesses, required the evacuation of hospitals and nursing homes and left cities without power or drinking water, the governors of Iowa and South Dakota said.
“I keep thinking about all these things that I lost and maybe the little things that I could get back that we put up,” said Aiden Engelkes in the northwest Iowa community of Spencer, which imposed a curfew during floods that surpassed a record set. in 1953. “And then I think where my friends are, because their things are gone too.”
Over the weekend, crews from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources evacuated families with children and a person in a wheelchair from flooded homes, director Kayla Lyon told reporters. Gov. Kim Reynolds said the department performed 250 water rescues on Saturday.
“At one point, we had 22 conservation officers doing water rescues, navigating a pretty nasty current,” Lyon said.
Just outside Mankato, Minnesota, the local sheriff’s office said there was a “partial failure” of the Rapidan Dam’s western support structure on the Blue Earth River after the dam became clogged with debris.
Eric Weller, emergency management director for the Blue Earth County Sheriff’s Office, said the bank would likely experience further erosion, but he did not expect the concrete dam itself to fail. The only two houses downstream have already been evacuated.
A 2019 Associated Press investigation on dams across the country found that the Rapidan Dam was in good condition and there would likely be property loss if it failed. Two 2021 studies said repairs would cost more than $15 million and removal more than $80 million.
In Spencer, Engelkes was still unable Monday to return to his apartment on the first floor of a building near the Des Moines River, nor was he able to work in a flooded chicken hatchery.
He spent more than seven hours Saturday in a friend’s fourth-floor apartment, waiting to be rescued by boat, his 2013 Chevy SUV in rough waters except for a piece of his antenna. Rescuers broke a window in the second-floor stairwell and nearly 70 people crawled out, carried by volunteers in boats of four and five.
Engelkes and his girlfriend left with a bag of clothes, three cats in a carrier and a kitten that his girlfriend carried on her shirt. Their apartment had about 1.2 meters of water, but they still hope to recover the electronics they placed at a higher point. They are now with his mother on higher ground.
About 65 miles west of Spencer in Rock Valley, Deb Kempema lost her home decor store, First Impressions, after a river levee failed.
It was “7,000 square feet of really beautiful things. And it was all over,” she told KELO-TV.
While power outages were minimal in the affected states on Monday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us, south of Rock Valley, water surrounded the power substation in Correctionville, causing an outage.
President Joe Biden was briefed by his homeland security team about the flooding in Iowa, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had personnel on the scene, the White House said.
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Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas. Contributing to this report were Associated Press journalists Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri; Seung Min Kim in Washington; Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Scott McFetridge in Des Moines, Mike Phillis in St. Louis and Mark Vancleave in Mankato, Minnesota.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
