Floodwaters kept Indiana neighborhoods underwater for a second day on Thursday as forecasters warned that more severe storms could push another round of heavy rain across the Midwest. Upwards of 36 million people were under flood alerts, and some parts of Indiana had already logged the highest daily rainfall totals ever recorded in their areas on Wednesday.
The scale of the damage was already showing in the ground: a quarter of a million people in Indiana and Illinois woke to power outages, roads were washed out, and part of I-70 buckled under pounding rain. In Cambridge City, Indiana, rescue crews had to reach people by boat after catastrophic flooding left streets several feet deep, filled ground floors of homes and covered cars to their roofs.
Christian Corder, who evacuated his flooded home in nearby New Castle after more than 11 inches of rain fell in just over a day, said the scene was overwhelming. “A lot of stuff is ruined,” he said. New Castle was one of the places hit as the rain kept falling through Wednesday and into Thursday, turning a stretch of the state into a corridor of flooded roads, detours and mud.
The problem is that the water has not had time to go anywhere. Since Monday, 277 flash flooding incidents had been reported across the Ohio Valley, and since Tuesday leaders in the region had declared seven different flash flood emergencies. Forecast offices in Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa and Tennessee said another 4 inches or more of rain could fall in each state, keeping rivers swollen and raising the possibility that some levels could reach marks not seen in more than a century.
That leaves the Midwest in a narrow race between cleanup and the next storm band. Cambridge City’s streets were still submerged or caked in mud on Thursday, and Wednesday’s flash flooding had already reached as far south as Knoxville, Tennessee. The immediate question is no longer whether the region has been hit hard; it is which neighborhoods, roads and rivers can hold up if the next round of rain arrives before the water recedes.
