Midwestern flooding brings deaths, evacuations

Flooding in the Midwest killed at least two, collapsed a railroad bridge near Sioux City and sent water surging around a dam Monday after days of heavy rains that have forced hundreds of people to evacuate or be rescued from rising waters.

An Illinois man died Saturday while trying to go around a barricade in Northwest Iowa’s Spencer, KTIV-TV from Sioux City reported Monday. The Little Sioux River swept his truck away, according to authorities. Officials found the vehicle in the tree line but weren't able to recover his body until Monday because of dangerous conditions.

At least one other death happened in South Dakota, the state’s governor, Kristi Noem, said without providing details.

The flooding brought added misery to parts of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Minnesota during a vast and stubborn heat wave. In some communities hit by flooding, the temperature Monday afternoon approached 100 degrees.

More than 3 million people live in areas touched by flooding, from Omaha to St. Paul. Storms dumped huge amounts of rain from Thursday through Saturday, with as much as 18 inches falling south of Sioux Falls, S.D, according to the National Weather Service.

More rain is forecast, and many streams may not crest until later this week as the floodwaters slowly drain down a web of rivers to the Missouri and Mississippi.

“I’ve never had to evacuate my house,” Hank Howley, a 71-year-old North Sioux City, S.D., resident said as she joined others on a levee of the swollen Big Sioux River, where the railroad bridge collapsed a day earlier. “We’re on the highest spot in town. But what good is that when the rest of the town is flooded? It makes me nervous.”

Like Howley, scores of residents of Sioux City’s Riverside neighborhood fled their homes Monday to escape the Big Sioux River as it climbed to record heights.

Sioux City Fire Rescue went door-to-door after the city ordered a mandatory evacuation for areas near South River Drive. Fire crews rescued 17 stranded residents by boat, as the swollen river overwhelmed levees in low-lying areas. Floodwaters entered at least 70 homes, according to authorities.

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Russell Leigh quickly moved his mother, Donna Bourret, out her home on Fairbanks Street late Sunday night as the river streamed over a nearby levy.

"We came out here two or three times last night to see if we needed to get my mom out of the house before it crested, or do we keep her in there until today?" Leigh said Monday morning. "Well, I came out about 10 o’clock last night and we saw the levee was starting to leak behind her house, so we grabbed her last night, and I came here (Monday) morning to see her house underwater.

“My mom’s house is probably about 4 feet under right now.”

Levees in Riverside were built to withstand up to 46 feet of water. On Sunday, the city built a temporary levee on South River Drive, but it didn't adequately hold back the wall of water. In addition to floodwaters entering basements, water also came up through storm drains in many homes, the city said in a news release.

The flooding has, over the course of days, damaged roads and bridges, shuttered or destroyed businesses, required hospitals and nursing homes to evacuate, and left cities without power or safe drinking water, the governors of Iowa and South Dakota said.

The bridge connected North Sioux City with Sioux City and fell into the Big Sioux River about 11 p.m. Sunday, officials said. There were no reports of injuries from the collapse.

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The bridge’s owner, BNSF Railway, had stopped operating it as a precaution during the flooding, spokesperson Kendall Sloan said. The railroad said the bridge was used by only a few trains per day and did not expect rerouting to have a significant impact.

“I just keep thinking about all this stuff I’ve lost and maybe the little things I could recover that we put up high,” said Aiden Engelkes in Spencer, which imposed curfews during flooding that surpassed a record set in 1953. “And then I think about where my friends are, because their stuff is also gone.”

About 65 miles west of Spencer, in Rock Valley, Deb Kempema lost her home decor store, First Impressions, after a river levee was overtopped.

It was “7,000 square feet of very pretty, pretty things. And it’s all gone,” she told KELO-TV.

Reynolds on Monday visited Rock Valley for the first time since the river roared out of its banks and spread out across the community.

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About 16,000 sandbags were added to the levee system in less than six hours and ran about 4,000 feet, according to David Miller, economic director for Rock Valley and co-chair for the Incident Command. Early assessments show 100 to 150 homes received main-floor water damage. Overall, about 500 homes were affected by the flooding, which included sewer backups in basements, local officials said.

"The mission (is) critical," Miller told Reynold during a briefing Monday morning. "Moving forward, the top priority is doing cleanup efforts and recovery. We’ve asked for volunteers to come in and do a lot of that already."

President Joe Biden has been briefed by his homeland security team about the Iowa flooding, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency had personnel on the ground there, the White House said.

Dave Dreeszen and Hannah Schuh of the Sioux City Journal contributed to this report.