As this water emergency quickly becomes a public-health crisis, here’s what officials are reporting.
Record flooding has submerged the Midwest this week, leaving broken levees, flooded fields, and severed bridges in its wake. Thousands of residents have taken shelter or are stranded after snow melted rapidly and overwhelmed the regions rivers. On Monday, the National Weather Service said its flood warnings and advisories remained in effect across eastern Nebraska and parts of Iowa. In Nebraska alone, 54 cities, 53 counties, and two tribes have declared flood emergencies, according to AccuWeather.
As this water emergency quickly becomes a public-health crisis, heres what officials are reporting now.
Governors in Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, and Wisconsin have all declared flood emergencies, and many communities remain under mandatory evacuation. „This is probably the most widespread flooding damage weve had in the last half-century,“ Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts told reporters from the Omaha World-Herald at a press conference on Friday. „Even when we were away from the water system, we saw that the fields were very saturated.“
Public officials are stressing that conditions are still dangerous—and theyll only get worse. Local agencies and sheriffs departments are reporting several levee breaches over the Mississippi River, which could contribute to the „major to historic river flooding“ expected across the Missouri and Mississippi River Basins, according to the National Weather Service.
