Flash floods may mean end of Wis. town
Meantime, East Coast braces for temperatures near 100 degrees
Luis Vazquez of Chicago looks out onto an emptied Lake Delton in Wisconsin Monday after floodwaters broke through an earthen dam, causing the lake to drain.
Deadly Midwest floods push on
June 10: Parts of Indiana, Wisconsin and Iowa are reeling from devastating floods, with at least 10 deaths and thousands evacuated from their homes. NBC's Monica Novotny reports.
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updated 11:05 a.m. ET June 10, 2008
LAKE DELTON, Wis. - For nearly a year, this tiny southwestern Wisconsin village has struggled to survive after a devastating flood. A new deluge may have sealed its fate.
Flash floods inundated the town of 625 over the weekend, just 10 months after residents worked to rebuild their homes and businesses.
The swollen Kickapoo River engulfed nearly the entire town Monday morning, forcing about 150 people to evacuate. By evening, the village was a grid of canals with cars submerged up to their windows and parking lots looking like lakes, just as it was in August.
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The flooding was caused by violent, drenching weekend thunderstorms that displaced thousands of Indiana residents and were blamed for 15 deaths in the Midwest and elsewhere.
The downpours in states like Iowa, Illinois and Indiana flooded corn fields and made it difficult for farmers to plant, pushing corn prices to record highs on commodities exchanges this week.
Meantime, the East Coast is being baked by a heat wave. Heat watches and advisories were in effect Tuesday from North Carolina to New Hampshire. New York City recorded a high of 99 on Monday.
Dozens of schools in the Northeast planned early closings for a second day in classrooms that lack air conditioning. Agencies in Wilmington, Del., appealed for donations of fans and air conditioners for needy residents.
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New storms during the night knocked out power to more than 50,000 customers in Ohio, utilities reported Tuesday. Michigan utilities said about 247,000 customers were still blacked out because of the weekend storms.
Assessing the damage
An engineer assessment team from the Wisconsin National Guard was headed to Lake Delton on Tuesday to determine what would be needed to begin repairs on an embankment along the man-made lake that gave way, releasing a powerful current.
The 267-acre lake emptied into the nearby Wisconsin River on Monday, washing out part of a highway, sweeping away three homes and tearing apart two others.
Don Kubenik, 68, burst into tears after seeing the 2,800-square-foot home he built in 2003 snapped into pieces. The businessman from the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis said he spent every weekend there.
"That house had everything you can imagine and now it's all gone," said Kubenik, who was in West Allis when the lake overflowed. "My boat's gone. The pier's gone. Everything is gone."
Lake Delton, a key part of the Wisconsin Dells tourism area, was nearly dry by Monday afternoon. The 20 resorts that line the lake already are reporting cancellations by people who had planned summer vacations in the area.
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Residents of Gays Mills, about 70 miles southwest of Lake Delton, stood on the edge of their ruined town, so close to finally turning the corner before this latest flood.
"I can't believe this is happening again," said Liz Klekamp, 23, who said she grabbed her cat and fled Monday morning when water poured into her house. "It's really, truly sad."
Town could be finished
Asked if this was the end of the town, Village President Larry McCarn just stared ahead. "It could be," he answered.
In waterlogged Indiana, military crews joined desperate sandbagging operations Monday to hold back streams surging toward record levels, and rushing water breached dams and washed out portions of highways.
Indiana officials said they could not give a dollar estimate on the damage or the number of homes and businesses destroyed by flooding caused by up to 11 inches of rain on Saturday. Two more inches fell Monday.
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Some 200 Indiana National Guard members and 140 Marines from North Carolina helped local emergency agencies sandbag a levee of the White River at Elnora, about 100 miles southwest of Indianapolis. The White River was forecast to crest Tuesday at nearby Newberry at 16 feet above flood stage.
By Monday morning, flooding at eight sites in central and southern Indiana had eclipsed levels set in the deluge of March 1913, which had been considered Indiana's greatest flood in modern times, said Scott Morlock, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Indiana.
The weekend's heavy rain and the threat of more heavy rain later this week could push corn prices even higher, analysts say, likely adding to Americans' growing grocery bills. The price of corn for July delivery jumped to a record of nearly $7 a bushel Monday on the Chicago Board of Trade, up from around $4 a year ago.
The weekend death toll included eight in Michigan, three in Indiana and one each in Iowa and Connecticut. Authorities said wet roads contributed to the deaths of two motorists in separate accidents Monday in Oklahoma, where more than 4 inches of rain fell.
