Published: June 07, 2008 07:47 pm         

Devastating deluge leaves Terre Haute, Valley submerged

TERRE HAUTE — Wealthy or poor, from the riverbottoms to some of the area’s toniest neighborhoods, tens of thousands of Wabash Valley residents suffered the effects Saturday of biblical proportions of rain that fell over a 24-hour span.

State and local officials could not estimate the number of people in Vigo and surrounding counties who had to be evacuated from their homes. By nightfall, about 100 evacuees had taken shelter in Terre Haute North Vigo High School where the Red Cross and staff members of Bethesda Gardens nursing home provided food, water and sleeping cots.

Rising waters from rivers, streams and already-saturated lowlands temporarily rendered the city of Brazil a virtual island, closed Interstate 70 in both directions well into the night and made scores of major highways, roads and bridges throughout Indiana and Illinois impassable.

Mike Smith, a coordinating officer with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, pronounced the flood area “extensive” and said the entire Valley was “inundated.”

In Vermillion County emergency management officials declared the city of Clinton a disaster area for the second time in a week.

While many neighborhoods in Terre Haute appeared to be untouched by the nearly 7 inches of rain that fell from Friday to Saturday morning, navigating the city became a challenge, at best, and impossible in several areas. The city’s southside from Springhill Road and Seventh Street, south past Allendale subdivision, was hit particularly hard.

According to the Honey Creek Fire Department, some residents of the affluent Allendale neighborhood were rescued from their rooftops by Department of Natural Resources crews in boats. Large areas of the Idle Creek golf course were under water.

In Prairieton, volunteer rescuers ferried the stranded in horse buggies and haywagons. In West Terre Haute, at least 150 people helped fill and stack sandbags to keep rising waters from engulfing the town.

The Bethesda Gardens residents, most of them elderly, had been evacuated from their facility just east of U.S. 41 South earlier in the day and taken to Terre Haute South Vigo High School. But encroaching water at the high school forced a second move to the city’s northern high school on Maple Avenue.

The water that crept to the edges of South Vigo High S also prompted Regional Hospital to announce a “total diversion” away from its facility to Union Hospital, also on the city’s north side.

Terre Haute’s far north end, however, had its own problem spots, at the Mill Dam bridge and the widely flooded intersection of Park Avenue and Lafayette Street. Volunteers stacked sandbags at the entrance of the post office at Thomas Avenue and across Lafayette Street in front of Otter Creek Middle School.

Despite the high number of emergency rescues, damaged homes and evacuations, no major injuries or deaths were reported.