By Kirk Johannesen, The Republic
johannesen@therepublic.com
By the time Bartholomew County knew it had a flooding emergency June 7, no adequate way existed to slow the floodwaters or warn people to move to higher ground.
Starting at 9:30 a.m., the first reports of water over roads came into Bartholomew County Emergency Operations Center. The first water rescue report came an hour later.
Dennis Moats, Emergency Management director, said no weather reports from the state EOC in the morning revealed a disaster heading toward the county. High water calls continued during the late morning and early afternoon, and at 1:47 p.m., Interstate 65 and U.S. 31 closed coming into and out of Columbus.
In the county's northern part, water rose so high it topped fields, roads, drainage ditches, levees and bridges. All the flood-prevention measures performed as well as could reasonably be expected, said Tom Finke, Bartholomew County's head of hydrology for legal drains. However, a levee broke north of Road 550N along the Flat Rock River.
"It's kind of like the interstate; (the river) can only handle so much traffic until it backs up," Finke said.
'Like a bomb'
With flooding worsening, Bartholomew County Emergency Management called a 3 p.m. meeting with key entities to discuss the situation.
From 3:30 p.m. on, calls poured into the EOC as rapidly as water rushed into Columbus.
"This was like a bomb being dropped on the city," said Ed Reuter, director of Bartholomew County Emergency Operations Center.
On an average day, the EOC - which provides radio and communication services for all police, fire and EMS responders - receives 600 calls. On June 7 it received 4,547. The EOC started the June 7 shift with four dispatchers but eventually added two more to handle the flood calls.
Calls simultaneously occupied all 20 lines available for 911 and administration calls.
Unable to contact emergency responders after each call, as dispatchers normally do, they wrote down addresses and relayed them in batches when possible.
Reuter said Columbus Police Department, Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department and Indiana State Police sent every available officer to provide assistance.
Authorities told citizens who wanted to help to take their boats to the city's northern part to rescue people, Reuter said.
"In 33 years working with state police ... I've never seen an event like this," Reuter said.
Moats said the fl od offered no warning of its speed and depth.
The county receives flood warnings periodically, but people often don't pay attention because flooding in the past has been moderate, he said.
On June 6 and 7, in some parts of Columbus, the water rose so high so quickly, people had about 20 minutes to evacuate.
Columbus doesn't have levees to hold off floodwaters, and no plan for sandbagging to create temporary levees, Moats said.
"We have never had all four rivers at record flood stages all at once," Moats said.
Storm sirens not used
The inability to adequately warn people about conditions, or broadcast evacuation orders, compounded efforts to respond to flooding in neighborhoods.
No storm sirens sounded because they are ineffective for floods, Moats said.
People associate the warning sirens with the need to take shelter.
With flooding, people sometimes should avoid taking shelter in their houses, Moats said.
The idea of broadcasting a warning message over the sirens also was shot down.
Messages broadcast over the sirens are intelligible only for short distances.
If people in safe neighborhoods misinterpreted a message as an evacuation notice, Moats said, it could have increased traffic on roads and created more hazards.
EOC dispatchers lacked as a warning tool the ability to issue updates over cable TV.
Previously, dispatchers issued warnings over Comcast channels, but that is no longer an option. Moats did not know why. "Obviously, nothing worked as well as it should have," Moats said. "We're still amazed that there were only two deaths," he added.