Floods in Midwest; steamy heat in EastSFlb

President Bush declared a disaster in 29 Indiana counties.

LAKE DELTON, Wis. (AP) — An earthen dam along a man-made lake gave way under severe flooding Monday, unleashing a powerful current that ripped several homes off their foundations and down the Wisconsin River.

Floodwater threatened dams across the Midwest, and military crews joined desperate sandbagging operations to hold back Indiana streams surging toward record levels. Stormy weekend weather was blamed for 10 deaths, most in the Midwest.

While the Midwest struggled with flooding, the East was locked in a sauna. Heat advisories were posted Monday from the Carolinas to Connecticut, with temperatures topping 100 from Georgia to Virginia. New York City recorded a high of 99.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Monday it would close a 250-mile stretch of the Mississippi River — from Fulton, Ill., to Clarksville, Mo. — as soon as Thursday because of flooding, bringing barge traffic to a halt.

The closure could last up to two weeks, corps spokesman Ron Fournier said.

In Wisconsin, an embankment forming the side of the man-made Lake Delton failed, and the water poured out into the nearby Wisconsin River. The 245-acre lake nearly emptied, sweeping away three homes and tearing apart two others.

“It’s horrible. There’s no way we could stop it,” said Thomas Diehl, a Lake Delton village trustee.

A couple thousand people in Columbia County about 30 miles north of Madison were urged to evacuate below the Wyocena and Pardeeville dams, said Pat Beghin, a spokesman for the county’s emergency management.

The Wyocena Dam’s spillway had washed out, and workers were sandbagging to try to save it, Beghin said. The Pardeeville dam also was overflowing, he said.

A new storm system was headed toward the Ohio Valley from the southern Plains on Monday — Oklahoma got up to 6 inches of rain by late morning and utilities reported nearly 5,000 customers blacked out — and the National Weather Service said as much as 3 inches of rain could fall on already waterlogged Indiana late Monday.

The weather service posted a tornado warning for south-central Illinois and a severe thunderstorm warning for Indiana.

President Bush late Sunday declared a major disaster in 29 Indiana counties. Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said nearly a third of his state’s 99 counties need federal help.

Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle had declared 30 counties in a state of emergency by noon Monday, and at least 130 inmates from the Department of Corrections were helping sandbag throughout the region.

Along the East Coast, people sweltered through the heat wave.

New York City opened 300 cooling centers Monday, said Office of Emergency Management spokesman Chris Gilbride. District of Columbia officials declared Monday and today Code Red days for poor air quality, and schools in parts of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland closed early.

Employees at the Ohio Department of Health got the day off because of trouble with the air conditioning in their building.