Issue date: 6/10/08 Section: News

These vehicles parked at a home on Lincoln Highway at the Embarras Bridge, pictured last Thursday, were fully submerged by Sunday afternoon. (Rick Kambic/The Daily Eastern News)

This weekend, Charleston became a tourism attraction even to its own residents. Intense storms from Wednesday until Sunday left several roads flooded because of rising rivers.

At several bridges that cross the Embarras River, residents stopped to observe the items being washed away by the swift current. The bridge on Lincoln Highway was closed from about 3 p.m. on Sunday until early morning on Monday.

Just beyond the that bridge, a community of cabins on River Road were inundated by elevating waters on Thursday morning and the residents had to drive fishing boats to their windows to remove personal belongings. However, after Friday night's rain, the neighborhood was almost entirely submerged and several houses floated off the foundations. The tenants were unable to enter the flooded cornfield because the current expanded beyond the basin.

Residents said the only two massive floods that rose to dangerous levels were in the 1950s and again in 2002, but they never saw water rise above their roofs like on Sunday.

The crowd was forced to sit on cars and marooned boats while watching their belongings float away.

Unlike Thursday's rescue attempts, the homeowners said their possessions were damaged beyond salvage.

A couple planned to have their wedding at their cabin on June 21, but the flood destroyed the landscape and all the wedding materials that were stored in the cabin.

Vince Gutowski, a Geology professor at Eastern, said flooding of this type only occurs about once in a century.

While there weren't any official measurements of the rivers' water level, Gutowski said he estimates a depth of at least 20 feet in both the Embarras and Kaskaskia Rivers.

The flooding in Charleston occurred mainly because of intense rains in northern Illinois that drained in southbound flowing rivers, according William Saylor, associate supportive scientist at the Center for Watershed Science at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana.

He said water that rises above bridges only require approximately one or two feet of depth to accumulate a current strong enough to move a car. Patti Thompson, communications manager for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, said Charleston did not request assistance with rising waters at either river and the city was not considered in a state of emergency.

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