Homes Washed Away in Wisconsin As Lake Spills

LAKE DELTON, Wis. (AP) — An earthen dam along a man-made lake gave way under severe flooding Monday, unleashing a powerful current that ripped several homes off their foundations and down the Wisconsin River.

Floodwater threatened dams across the Midwest, and military crews joined desperate sandbagging operations to hold back Indiana streams surging toward record levels. Stormy weekend weather was blamed for 10 deaths, most in the Midwest.

While the Midwest struggled with flooding, the East was locked in a sauna. Heat advisories were posted Monday from the Carolinas to Connecticut, with temperatures topping 100 from Georgia to Virginia. New York City recorded a high of 99.

The Army Corps of Engineers said Monday that it would close a 250- mile stretch of the Mississippi River — from Fulton, Ill., to Clarksville, Mo. — as soon as Thursday because of flooding, halting barge traffic.

The closure could last up to two weeks, the corps’ spokesman Ron Fournier said.

In Wisconsin, an embankment forming the side of the man-made Lake Delton failed, and the water poured out into the nearby Wisconsin River. The 245-acre lake nearly emptied, sweeping away three homes and tearing apart two others.

“It’s horrible. There’s no way we could stop it,” said Thomas Diehl, a Lake Delton village trustee. “The breach is between 300 and 400 feet wide. The volume (of water) was just so great there wasn’t anything anyone could do.”

About 20 resorts surround the lake.

A couple of thousand people in Columbia County about 30 miles north of Madison were urged to evacuate below the Wyocena and Pardeeville dams, said Pat Beghin, a spokesman for the county’s emergency management.

The Wyocena Dam’s spillway had washed out, and workers were sandbagging to try to save it, Beghin said. The Pardeeville dam also was overflowing, he said.

About 200 Indiana National Guard members and 140 Marines and sailors joined local emergency agencies Monday in sandbagging a levee of the White River at Elnora, about 100 miles southwest of Indianapolis. The 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.

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