In the Midwest, Flooding Destroys a Bridge, Causes People to Leave, and Kills at Least Two

North Sioux City, South Dakota — Monday, flooding in the Midwest of the United States killed at least two people, destroyed a train bridge, and caused water to rush around a dam. This happened after days of heavy rains that forced hundreds of people to leave their homes or be rescued from the rising water.

Sioux City’s KTIV-TV reported Monday that an Illinois man died Saturday while trying to get around a roadblock in Spencer, Iowa.

A news report from the Clay County Sheriff’s Office told the station that the Little Sioux River swept his truck away. The police found the car in the trees, but they couldn’t get his body until Monday because the area was too dangerous.

In South Dakota, at least one person died, but Gov. Kristi Noem didn’t say more.

Parts of Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota were already in a lot of pain because of the heat wave, but the floods made things even worse. In some areas that had floods, it got close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 Celsius) on Monday afternoon.

From Omaha, Nebraska, to St. Paul, Minnesota, more than 3 million people live in places that have been flooded. Thursday through Saturday, storms dumped a lot of rain. The National Weather Service says that as much as 18 inches (46 centimeters) fell south of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

People who lived in places that didn’t get as much rain had to deal with more water moving downhill. It’s going to rain more, and many streams might not reach their highest point until later this week. This is because the floodwaters are slowly making their way down a web of rivers to the Missouri and Mississippi. A weather service hydrologist named Kevin Low said that the Missouri will reach its highest point at Omaha on Thursday.

A spokesperson for Amtrak said that buses were being used to temporarily move passengers because of flooding in the Omaha area on Monday.

Hank Howley, 71, of North Sioux City, South Dakota, said, “I’ve never had to leave my house.” She was on a levee of the flooded Big Sioux River, where the railroad bridge had fallen the day before. In the past few days, she didn’t have to leave either. She said, “We’re on the highest point in town.” That doesn’t help when the rest of the town is flooded, though. It gets under my skin.

Around 11 p.m. Sunday, the bridge that linked North Sioux City, South Dakota, and Sioux City, Iowa, broke off and fell into the Big Sioux River. Local news outlets showed pictures of a big part of the steel bridge that was partly underwater as floods rushed over it.

Reports said that no one was hurt when the building fell. A spokesman for BNSF Railway said that the bridge’s owner had stopped using it as a safety measure during the floods. The railroad said that barely any trains used the bridge every day and that they didn’t think the new route would have a big effect.

As of Monday morning, the Big Sioux River was stable at about 45 feet (13.7 meters) above sea level. This was more than 7 feet (2.1 meters) higher than the previous record.

To stop water on Interstate 29 in North Sioux City on Sunday night, the South Dakota Department of Transportation built a berm across the main road. In other places where the highway stayed open, water slowly made its way to the road. Howley, who has lived there for 33 years, said she is getting more worried about the serious flooding that is happening more often near I-29.

Over the course of several days, the flooding has destroyed or damaged businesses, damaged roads and bridges, forced hospitals and nursing homes to close, and left towns without power or clean water, according to the governors of Iowa and South Dakota.

“I just keep thinking about all the things I’ve lost and maybe the little things I could get back that we put up high,” Aiden Engelkes said in Spencer, Iowa, a town in northwest Iowa that had curfews during floods that broke the 1953 record. “Then I wonder where my friends are because their stuff is also gone.”

Director Kayla Lyon told reporters that over the weekend, teams from Iowa’s natural resources department helped families with children and a person in a wheelchair leave their flooded homes. Gov. Kim Reynolds said that on Saturday, the department did 250 water rescues.

Lyon said, “At one point, 22 conservation officers were out in the water saving people while navigating some pretty rough current.”

Authorities outside of Mankato, Minnesota, said that the western support structure for the Rapidan Dam on the Blue Earth River had “partial failed.” This happened because the dam got clogged with garbage. The western bank was worn away by the moving water.

Blue Earth County Sheriff Eric Weller is in charge of emergency management. He said that the bank would probably wash away even more, but he didn’t think the concrete dam would break. The two homes further downstream have already left.

The Associated Press looked into dams across the country in 2019 and found that the Rapidan Dam was in good shape. If it failed, property damage was likely to happen. Two reports from 2021 said that fixing things would cost more than $15 million and taking them down would cost more than $80 million.

Engelkes still couldn’t get back into his Spencer apartment on the first floor of a building near the Des Moines River on Monday. He also couldn’t go to work at a chicken farm that was flooded.

He was stuck in a friend’s fourth-floor apartment for more than seven hours on Saturday, waiting for a boat to come and save him. His 2013 Chevy SUV was submerged in rough water, and all that was left of its antenna was sticking out. Rescuers broke a window in a hallway on the second floor, and about 70 people managed to crawl out. Volunteers took them away by boat in groups of four or five.

When Engelkes and his lover left, she had a bag of clothes, three cats in a carrier, and a kitten in her shirt. There was about 4 feet (1.2 meters) of water in their room, but they still hoped to get back the electronics they put higher up. He and his mother now live on higher ground with them.

Over 65 miles (105 km) west of Spencer, in Rock Valley, Deb Kempema’s home decor store First Impressions closed because a river dam broke.

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

Monday afternoon, there were only a few power outages in the affected states, but PowerOutage.us says that water circled the power substation in Correctionville south of Rock Valley, causing an outage.

A member of President Joe Biden’s national security team told him about the flooding in Iowa. The White House also said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had staff there.