Historic flooding kills at least 7 in Indiana

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

**Sophie Hartley** (0:21)
I keep hearing over and over again, I've never seen anything like this before.

**Kalyani Saxena** (0:26)
Historic flooding in Indiana has killed at least seven people.
It's Monday, August 17th, and this is Here & Now Anytime from NPR and WBUR Boston. I'm Kalyani Saxena. Today on the show, the Trump administration's immigration crackdown has brought the federal court system to a breaking point.

**Kyle Cheney** (0:57)
Judges are overwhelmingly finding that the Trump administration's policy is being implemented illegally, that it's not proper to treat these people as though they should be mandatorily detained.

**Kalyani Saxena** (1:07)
Also, we'll remember Major League pitcher Tommy John, who died over the weekend at the age of 83

**Tommy John III** (1:14)
He was a man, he was a father, he was a son, and he was a baseball player to the max, but a human being expressing human potential at the greatest level.

**Kalyani Saxena** (1:24)
But first, let's get an update on the record flooding in Indiana. Nearly a week of heavy storms inundated the state, leaving at least seven people dead as of this recording. Recovery is ongoing, but residents are still displaced, their homes and businesses damaged, and their immediate futures uncertain.
Rob Schmidt spoke with IndyStar reporter Sophie Hartley about the latest.

**Rob Schmidt** (1:50)
This is the worst flooding that Indiana has seen since 1913 Can you describe the scene for us, what you're seeing, where you are?

**Sophie Hartley** (1:58)
Yeah. Well, for one, I keep hearing over and over again, I've never seen anything like this before. Over the past three days, I've been traveling up the White River, which is one of our main riverways, 40 miles, and I've covered a couple of different communities.
Water is everywhere. I was in Anderson, Indiana, which is about 45 minutes northeast of Indianapolis, and eight blocks south of the White River, which was a foot higher there that day than had ever been recorded before. I was standing over an intersection watching a man swim out to his brand new Chevy truck, trying to rescue warm memorabilia for his roommate. And so I'm just seeing people trying to cope hour by hour, but yeah, there's a lot of water.

**Rob Schmidt** (2:44)
People swimming to their cars. I mean, hundreds of homes have been impacted as well. At least 200 residents have been displaced across the state. What do we know about the scope of the damage so far?

**Sophie Hartley** (2:57)
Yeah, it's too soon to say much about official costs and people evacuated, but I can tell you what I've been seeing on the ground, which is hundreds, if not thousands of people who've been evacuated. I was talking to a man at a shelter, and he told me that his car was in the mechanic, and when his apartment staffer came by and told him he had to evacuate, he didn't know what else to do, so he just started walking. As he was walking down streets trying to call an Uber, there were city officials putting up road barricades, and so he was walking through the rain just trying to get somewhere.
It's too soon to say. I did stand in a house and watch the water come in. It was about three inches, and the homeowner was just kind of theorizing about how much it would cost to fix. So it's something we'll definitely be covering and following as things develop.

**Rob Schmidt** (3:48)
And of course, as we mentioned, at least seven people have died. Do authorities expect this number to rise?

**Sophie Hartley** (3:54)
We are not sure. We are following it closely and trying to learn as much as we can about the people who died in association with the storms, but it's really too soon to tell.

**Rob Schmidt** (4:06)
And is there any idea of how long the recovery of this will take or what's needed to get the state back on its feet?

**Sophie Hartley** (4:13)
Yeah. Again, this is too soon to tell, but we know that we could possibly have federal money coming in.
But the big issue here is that there's still water everywhere. And the White River reached its peak in Indianapolis, but that crest is heading south.
But in Marion County, where Indianapolis is and in the surrounding counties, I think engineers are still struggling to get in and assess some of that damage. We've seen roads get washed out or their backyards, houses flooded. But right now, we don't have a good estimate.