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ST. LOUIS — Communities across the Midwest were reeling Monday after heavy weekend storms across the region left at least 17 people dead, more than two million homes and businesses without power, and scores of roadways flooded.
The storm, which combined remnants of Hurricane Ike with a slow-moving front in a wave of low pressure, produced wind gusts of up to 81 miles per hour, spurred five tornadoes in Michigan and dumped 4 to 10 inches of water on parts of Missouri, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan.
The storm produced little rain in Ohio, but its sustained winds of more than 40 m.p.h. snapped trees and power lines, leaving 1.9 million customers without power. The storm is also being blamed for five deaths in that state, including that of a woman who died when a tree struck her home, said Tamara McBride, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.
Indiana was also hard hit, with rains swelling rivers and winds damaging trees and buildings. On Monday, 150,000 people remained without power there.
In Missouri, which like other Midwestern states had already been hit hard by flooding this summer, officials blamed the storm for four deaths. Floodwaters shut down more than 40 state and county roads and left an estimated 100,000 people without power on Sunday.
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CHICAGO - Residents of the Midwest faced blackouts affecting more than 2 million homes and businesses and flooded homes yesterday after a weekend of devastating weather caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ike.
The violent weather in the Midwest, the latest in a brutal summer that has slammed parts of the region with severe flooding, brought Ike's total death toll to at least 39 deaths in 10 states from the Gulf Coast to the Ohio Valley.
As Ike faded and headed off toward the Northeast, combining with a weather system that arrived from the West, it dumped as much as 6 to 8 inches of rain on parts of Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.
Thomas Babu (from left), Daniel Pappachen, and Daniel M. Babu, holding son Aaron, 1, evacuated Sunday in Chicago. Summer has been brutal in the Midwest. (Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune)
It spawned a tornado in Arkansas that damaged several buildings, and delivered hurricane-force wind to Ohio, temporarily shutting down Cincinnati's main airport during the weekend. Missouri had widespread flooding, and high water on the Mississippi River was expected to close a riverfront street later this week in front of the famed Gateway Arch of St. Louis.
This thing is HUGE!!! From ARKANSAS to OHIO?!!!!!
"We've got flash flooding all over the place," National Weather Service hydrologist Mark Fuchs said of Missouri.
"We've never had flooding like this," said Tom DeGiulio, town manager in Munster, Ind. About 40 Indiana National Guard troops were activated Sunday to help with the evacuation of as many as 5,000 residents there.
Yeah, it is obvious now that the MSM is pushing a shit agenda through omission and lies.
The narrative as George Bush leaves office is that he finally, finally won Iraq -- while ignoring the destruction of this nation (fires, floods, etc) and its economy!
About 2 million homes and businesses across Ohio had no electricity yesterday, Governor Ted Strickland said as he declared a state of emergency, which allows the Ohio Department of Transportation to help communities remove debris from roads. He said it would take days to restore power in all areas of the state.
About 450 Ohio school districts canceled classes yesterday, and the blackouts shut down one-third of the state's traffic signals, officials said. The Ohio outage was the biggest in Duke Power history, said Duke spokeswoman Kathy Meinke. "We've never seen anything like this in early fall," American Electric Power spokesman Jeff Rennie said of Ohio's problems.
Evacuees who spent the night in a shelter set up at a school in Munster said yesterday that the water rose quickly. "The water was nothing but a trickle in the middle of the street, and by the time we decided what to do it was too late," said George Polvich, one of the Munster residents rescued by boat. "There was, like, 3 feet of water."
The record rainfall also threatened farmers' harvests. Major flooding is predicted this week for towns in Missouri.
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Good thing we have a MSM that will ignore, minimize, or hide the devastation!!!!
