Storms start to move out of Minnesota, continue for western Wisconsin

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A sandbagged levee was preventing a
swollen river from spilling over its banks and flooding a
northeastern Iowa city, but officials on Wednesday asked for
additional volunteers to help shore it up as more rain loomed.
      

The Cedar River had been expected to top the levee during the
night, deluging downtown Cedar Falls, a city of 35,000 people some
130 miles northwest of Des Moines. But city spokeswoman Susan
Staudt said early Wednesday that the sandbags appeared to be
holding.


      Flood stage at Cedar Falls is 88 feet, and by about 5 a.m. the
river stood at 101.8 feet, down slightly from earlier in the night.
The previous record was 99.2 feet in 1999.

      Thousands of volunteers who showed up Tuesday to help with the
sandbagging effort "saved this city, but we are still at a
critical point," Staudt said.


      She said more volunteers were needed to help reinforce the
sandbag wall, which rises several feet above the levee. Volunteers
patrolling the sandbag wall during the night reinforced spots where
water was seeping through, she said.


      Thunderstorms arrived in western Iowa during the morning as a
band of storms rippled across the northern Plains, and the National
Weather Service issue a severe thunderstorm watch for northwest
Iowa and parts of Minnesota and South Dakota.


      "If we get more rain (the river) can rise again," Staudt said.
"The levee and the ground is saturated and we want to make sure it
doesn't give way."


      Rising rivers wiped out a railroad bridge elsewhere in Iowa on
Tuesday, closed part of a Wisconsin freeway and forced residents
along the Mississippi River to prepare for what could be the worst
flooding in 15 years.


      In Cedar Falls, Donita Krueger was among those helping fill
sandbags Tuesday.


      "If this breaks, the whole downtown will be flooded," she
said. "Everything goes on down here. It would be a big hit to the
community."


      White, yellow and orange sandbags lined downtown, which was
evacuated Tuesday. Tarps and plastic were taped to windows and
doors. Mary Dooley of the American Red Cross said more than 70
people stayed in a shelter overnight.


      In nearby Waterloo, fast-moving water swept away a railroad
bridge used to transport tractors from a John Deere factory to
Cedar Rapids. It also led the city to shut its downtown and close
five bridges.


      To the south, municipal officials in Palo urged residents to
evacuate as water was expected to rise as much as 2 feet higher
than in 1993, when devastating flooding covered wide areas of Iowa
and adjoining states.


      Flooding threatened water treatment plants in several towns, Lt.
Gov. Patty Judge said. Mason City's plant was knocked out of
service Sunday when the Winnebago River broke through a levee,
while officials in Des Moines hoped that releasing water from the
Saylorville Reservoir would protect the capital city and its water
treatment plant.


      In Wisconsin, fixing the broken and nearly empty Lake Delton,
where water carved a new channel as it rushed through a huge gap in
an embankment, was only one of the challenges facing engineers and
contractors on Wednesday.


      The rising Rock River near Johnson Creek threatened a bridge and
shut down westbound lanes of Interstate 94, which links Milwaukee
and Madison.


      State and local officials were monitoring various dams where
high water from days of storms threatened to make them give way.


      But while the new storms moving across the Midwest on Wednesday
threatened to drop an extra inch or two of rain on Wisconsin on
Thursday, weather service meteorologist Bill Borghoff said a dry
spell could be coming.


      "As we head into next week, it looks pretty dry for the most
part," he said.


      In Elnora, Ind., about 100 miles southwest of Indianapolis,
berms of white sandbags and concrete barriers held back the White
River. Most residents left after voluntary evacuation orders came
late Monday, two days after the area got up to 10 inches of rain.


      Downriver from Elnora, a levee failed early Wednesday near the
town of Capehart, and Daviess County authorities urged residents to
evacuate.

      "We've got about a 40-yard swath of levee that's gone," said
Indiana state Rep. Dave Crooks, speaking for the county's Emergency
Management Agency. "We've got rapidly rising water in that whole
bottom area. If you've got a home there, it's pretty serious."


      Authorities also ordered as many as 300 residents north of
nearby Maysville to evacuate late Tuesday after water topped a
levee.


      Along the Mississippi River, the National Weather Service on
Tuesday predicted crests of 10 feet above flood stage and higher
over the next two weeks. Most of the towns are protected by levees,
but outlying areas could be flooded.


      "This is major flooding," weather service hydrologist Karl
Sieczynski said of the Mississippi. He urged people in unprotected
flood plain areas to seek higher ground.


      Elsewhere, thunderstorms brought relief to parts of the East
Coast that had been baking in a heat wave for four days.
Temperatures in the upper 90s on Tuesday stretched from Georgia all
the way to northern New England, where the weather service reported
an afternoon high of 99 at Portsmouth, N.H.


      The storms also knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of
homes and businesses. About 93,000 customers in New Jersey, 110,000
in southeastern Pennsylvania, 75,000 in upstate New York and 20,000
in Connecticut remained without electricity early Wednesday, and
some 152,000 customers were still blacked out in Michigan from a
series of storms that began Friday.


      Philadelphia officials blamed two deaths on the heat and the
upstate New York storms were blamed for one death.

Associated Press writers Amy Lorentzen in Cedar Falls, Iowa;
Luke Meredith in Des Moines, Iowa; and Todd Richmond in Lake
Delton, Wis.; and David N. Goodman in Detroit contributed to this
report.

Gallery

A sandbagged levee was preventing a
swollen river from spilling over its banks and flooding a
northeastern Iowa city, but officials on Wednesday asked for
additional volunteers to help shore it up as more rain loomed.

Sandbagged levee holds in Iowa, protects city

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