NORTH SIOUX CITY, S.D. — Flooding in the Midwestern U.S. collapsed a railroad bridge and tested a dam Monday after days of heavy rains that have forced hundreds of people to evacuate or be rescued from rising waters.
The flooding brought additional 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 Fahrenheit (38 Celsius).
More than 3 million people live in areas touched by flooding, from Omaha, Nebraska, to St. Paul, Minnesota, and storms dumped huge amounts of rain from Thursday through Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
Places that didn’t get as much rain still had to contend with the extra water moving downstream. 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. The Missouri will crest at Omaha on Thursday, said Kevin Low, a weather service hydrologist.
“I’ve never had to evacuate my house,” Hank Howley, a 71-year-old North Sioux City, South Dakota, 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.”
The bridge connected North Sioux City, South Dakota, with Sioux City, Iowa, and fell into the Big Sioux River around 11 p.m. Sunday, officials said. Images on local media showed a large span of the steel bridge partially underwater as floodwaters rushed over it.
There were no reports of injuries from the collapse. 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.
The Big Sioux River stabilized Monday morning at around 45 feet, over 7 feet higher than the previous record, Sioux City Fire Marshal Mark Aesoph said.
In North Sioux City, the South Dakota Department of Transportation built a berm Sunday night across Interstate 29 to stem flooding, temporarily blocking the major route. In other areas where the interstate remained open, water crept toward the road. Howley, who has lived there for 33 years, said she has a growing concern over more frequent severe flooding around I-29.
At least one person died in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem has said without providing details.
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.
“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 the northwestern Iowa community of 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.”
Outside Mankato, Minnesota, the local sheriff’s office said the Rapidan Dam on the Blue Earth River became plugged with debris. Water is carving out land on its west side and relieving pressure, Blue Earth County Sheriff Jeff Wersal said, so “I don’t anticipate the dam just crumbling and breaking.”
Even if water does overtop the dam, the only two residences downstream have already voluntarily evacuated, Wersal said.
A 2019 Associated Press investigation into dams across the country found that the Rapidan Dam was in fair condition and there likely would be loss of property if it failed. A pair of 2021 studies said repairs would cost upwards of $15 million, and removal more than $80 million.
In Spencer, Engelkes still wasn’t able Monday to get back into his apartment on the first floor of a building close to the Des Moines River, nor could he go to work at a flooded chicken hatchery.
He spent more than seven hours Saturday in a friend’s apartment on the fourth floor, waiting to be rescued by a boat, his 2013 Chevy SUV under roiling waters except for a bit of its antenna. Rescuers broke a window in a stairwell on the second floor, and almost 70 people crawled out, volunteers ferrying them away by boat in fours and fives.
Engelkes and his girlfriend left with a bag of clothes, three cats in a carrier, and a kitten his girlfriend carried in her shirt. They expect their apartment to be ruined by about 4 feet of water but hope to still reclaim electronics they placed higher. They’re now staying with his mother on higher ground.
About 65 miles (105 kilometers) west of Spencer, in Rock Valley, Deb Kempema lost her home decor store, First Impressions, after a river levee broke, forcing evacuations and destroying shops.
It was “7,000 square feet of very pretty, pretty things. And it’s all gone,” she told KELO-TV.
While power outages were minimal in the affected states Monday afternoon, according to PowerOutage.us, south of Rock Valley, water surrounded the power substation in Correctionville, causing an outage.
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.
Hannah Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa, and Hanna from Topeka, Kansas. Contributing to this report were Associated Press journalists Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Summer Ballentine in Columbia, Missouri; Seung Min Kim in Washington; Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Scott McFetridge, in Des Moines, and Mike Phillis in St. Louis.
