Flood Victims Wade Home Homes Filled With Muck; Surge Heading Downstream

Some residents waded back to muck-filled homes Monday, while others inspected their dwellings by boat, moving slowly over the Ohio River floodwaters so the waves would not break their windows and make the flooding worse.

Jeff Grose brought his 4-year-old son to look at their century-old home. Justin’s bedroom, decorated with animals and clowns, held nearly 2 feet of water.

“He was kind of sad,” Grose said. “He said, ‘Daddy, just open the doors and windows and get that water out of there.”’

As the dangerous crest of the Ohio River moved toward well-protected Evansville and the farming communities of western Kentucky, some of the 192 people who evacuated this community last week returned for the first time.

They were only allowed to look, not move back in, and what they saw included stained walls, soaked furniture and ruined lives.

Volunteer firefighters ferried the anxious down city streets, driving the boats slowly because the wake shattered windows in swamped houses and trailers and washed water into people’s homes.

Scott Basham put on waders to visit his flooded house trailer on the edge of Goose Hollow, one of the hardest hit neighborhoods of Grandview. He earlier put a sign on the home that read “SS Minnow” in a joking reference to TV’s “Gilligan’s Island.”

The flooding began with a violent weather system that also brought deadly tornadoes to Arkansas and Mississippi. The twisters and the high water in West Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee have killed 59 people since March 1.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency sent employees into the hardest-hit areas. Damage is expected to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The crest of the Ohio River, at its highest level in 33 years, headed for Evansville, the biggest city affected by flooding since Louisville last week.

Paducah, Ky., the next-largest city expecting the crest, also is protected by a floodwall. The river is expected to reach its highest point there on Friday. Seventy homes have been evacuated.

In Falmouth, Ky., a devastated town where five people died, the mayor was hospitalized with chest pains.

“We have to be strong and we have to go through it,” Mayor Max Goldberg said from his hospital bed. “I hadn’t cried in 50 years, but I had to when I went down through there.”