FINDLAY, Ohio (AP) — Gail Leatherman didn’t break down until she peeked into her waterlogged basement and saw a soggy photo of her and her husband, taken for their 17th wedding anniversary.
She salvaged the picture but not her treasured Christmas decorations.
And that wasn’t the worst of it.
“A year ago, our insurer told us we could drop our flood insurance,” Mrs. Leatherman said. “So we did.”
Water from the worst flood in nearly a century in this northwestern Ohio city began receding yesterday, as it did elsewhere in the Midwest, allowing some of the more than 1,000 homeowners who had been displaced to get a look at the soaked photo albums, boxes of clothes and furniture in their basements.
With the flooding and more storms moving through, the death toll across the Upper Midwest and from the remnants of Tropical Storm Erin that swept Texas, Oklahoma and Missouri over the past week rose to at least 26. In one Ohio county alone, the tally of damaged homes was more than 700.
In Oklahoma City, authorities searched a muddy, swollen lake for a 17-year-old caught in a current Wednesday when he and other members of his high school cross-country team tried to swim across a flooded trail.
Storms rattled and soaked northern and west-central Illinois, knocking down trees and damaging buildings and adding to the rising water in several rivers, which crews rushed to sandbag.
In southwestern Wisconsin, the National Guard pumped water to relieve pressure on at least one dam, said Mike Goetzman, a spokesman for Wisconsin Emergency Management. The earthen dam suffered erosion earlier this week when water from weekend thunderstorms overflowed it.
Even in spots where the storms had passed, the intense sun prompted a heat advisory, with temperatures expected to hit the upper 90s throughout Ohio. Cincinnati schools closed because of the heat for the first time in at least 10 years.
In Findlay, hundreds of residents were making their way home a day after firefighters and volunteers in boats and canoes navigated waist-deep water to rescue people and pets. Generators hummed as residents pumped out water; it was too soon to start cleaning up the debris.
Some residents were still stuck in a shelter, where about 200 people slept Wednesday night. They were among those who had a foot or more of water in their homes.
John Treece could wade to only within a block of his home and saw water still covering the porch. His basement flooded in January, but it was nothing like this.
“We thought that would be the worst-case scenario,” Mr. Treece said.
He and his wife didn’t have insurance. “We couldn’t afford it,” he said. “I’m out of work.”
Gov. Ted Strickland had declared nine Ohio counties to be in a state of emergency, making flood victims there eligible for a maximum of $1,500 per family.
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