Flood-weary residents face rising rivers despite rain finally stopping in central and southern US
WTVA, LARRY DEVORE, CNN
By Hanna Park, Mary Gilbert, Andy Rose, CNN
(CNN) — A dayslong deluge of rain finally subsided across the South and Midwest on Monday, but, like the extensive flooding that followed, the danger for many communities will be slow to recede.
“As long as I’ve been alive — and I’m 52 — this is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” Wendy Quire, the general manager of the Brown Barrel restaurant in downtown Frankfort, Kentucky, told The Associated Press.
Floodwaters inundated communities across a broad swath of the central US on Sunday and Monday, the result of days of rain from storms that claimed at least 25 lives since the middle of last week.
Rivers are still on the rise in several flood-ravaged states. A half dozen states have rivers at “major flood” stage, according to the National Weather Service. Twenty-one measurement points along rivers in the Midwest and South are at major flood stage, and that number is forecast to roughly double in coming days.
Most of the major flood points are in Kentucky. The Kentucky River crested in the state capital of Frankfort Monday morning just shy of the city’s protective flood walls.
“It’s good to be able to come out this morning and it not be raining. We’re thankful for that, but we’re still dealing with water rising,” said John Ward, sheriff of Kentucky’s Hardin County, which is south of Louisville on a bend in the Ohio River.
“I’ve seen homes underwater that have never had water. I don’t think people were ready,” Ward told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Monday morning.
Over a foot of rain fell from Wednesday through Sunday across the mid-South where some locations – including Memphis, Tennessee – recorded nearly an entire spring’s worth of rain in just a few days.
The rain was dumped by destructive storms that also produced tornadoes across the central US. The weather service has rated at least 88 tornadoes since the storms began, with six rated as EF3 strength.
The storms have left at least 25 people dead across seven states, including 10 in Tennessee. Among them are a 5-year-old boy found in a storm-damaged home in Arkansas and a 9-year-old Kentucky boy who was swept away by floodwaters while walking to his school bus stop. On Sunday, a father and son were killed on a Georgia golf course when the tree they were sheltering under during high winds fell, Muscogee County Coroner Buddy Bryan told CNN.
“Remember, this event is not over until the waters have receded, until the areas that have flooded are fully dry, until we don’t have saturated ground that could create mudslides over roads and bridges,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday.
In several parts of Kentucky, the intense flooding has endangered the local water supply.
The Frankfort Plant Board announced Sunday it had turned off the electrical equipment used to pump water from the river and asked customers to “ration their water usage.” And in Harrodsburg, water pumps were turned off overnight as flood levels came close to the city’s “raw water station.” Now, “we are using stored water and the supply is limited,” reads a Facebook post from the city.
Floodwaters devastate swath of Kentucky
The widespread flooding triggered evacuations, water rescues and warnings to move to higher ground across the Bluegrass State. Many people are still in harm’s way as others start to dig out of the muck, but a dramatic return to winter-like chill early this week poses another complicating factor.
In Frankfort, the Kentucky River crested at its second-highest level on record Monday morning, just shy of 1978’s devastating flooding and worryingly close to what the city’s flood protections can handle. Parts of the city still endured extensive flooding despite the major flood protections holding.
Buffalo Trace Distillery, which prides itself on being one of the oldest continuously operating distilleries in the US, was also impacted by flooding in Frankfort from the Kentucky River, a spokesperson said. The distillery will be closed until at least Thursday and damage assessments can’t be performed until “the facilities become safe to navigate,” the spokesperson added.
In Prospect, along the Ohio River, the owners of Captain’s Quarters Riverside Grille responded to the incursion of dirty river water by deliberately flooding the restaurant with fresh water, keeping most of the silt and debris out. In a Facebook video, co-owner Andrew Masterson explained that when the flood recedes, it would be easier to clean up damage from clean water than river water.
“It is a huge interruption to our business. It’s a significant cost, but we know it comes with the territory of being on the river,” Masterson told CNN on Monday.
Water rescues were carried out Sunday near Colesburg, about 30 miles south of Louisville, the county sheriff reported, as waters rose rapidly in the Rolling Fork River.
Drone footage of nearby New Haven shows the aftermath of the river bursting its banks, flooding properties on the town’s main street with brown water. As the road leads out of town, it takes on the appearance of a causeway, fields hidden under vast quantities of water.
So many roads across Kentucky were impassable due to flooding over the weekend that the state ran out of road-closing barriers, the Hardin County sheriff said.
Farther east, footage from Wilmore shows a line of homes fully surrounded by water – some with the water right up to their rooflines. Red inflatable boats are seen moving around the neighborhood on floodwaters.
The Ohio River, which runs through Louisville, rose more than 5 feet in 24 hours and is expected to rise significantly higher over the next few days, Mayor Craig Greenberg said Saturday.
Flooding also plagued parts of Ohio. Emergency crews rescued a woman without a home who woke up surrounded by water in downtown Cincinnati early Sunday, CNN affiliate WKRC reported.
Later that day, another rescue was made after a driver ignored road closure signs by a former amusement park in the city. The driver was not injured but had to be rescued from their almost completely submerged vehicle, police told CNN affiliate WLWT. CNN reached out to the Cincinnati Police Department for comment.
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders took an aerial tour in northern Arkansas on Monday, where tornadoes and flooding came on the heels of dry, windy weather that sparked nearly 100 wildfires. “If there has been a natural disaster event, it has happened here in the last month,” she said.
The City of Clarksville and Montgomery County issued a joint local state of emergency after more than 118 residential properties and 14 commercial properties were impacted by flooding, with a third of reported damages classified as major.
Severe storms along the southeast coast Monday also caused snarls for travelers, with nearly 7,000 flights within, into, or out of the US delayed Monday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport was the hardest-hit, with more than 50% of flights delayed as of the evening.
CNN’s Taylor Romine, Joe Sutton, Amanda Jackson, Karina Tsui, Susannah Cullinane, Jacob Lev, Zenebou Sylla, Sara Smart and Zoe Sottile and CNN Meteorologist Gene Norman contributed to this report.
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