Aftermath of Midwest Deluge: Economic Impact

Aug. 25, 2007 — -- Across northern Illinois, rising rivers have thousands on edge, bracing themselves for the economic obstacles that will inevitably follow the storm.

Triple the average August rainfall has swelled the Fox River in Wisconsin to 50-year record elevation levels. The water has seeped into dozens of homes, despite sandbag deliveries by the tractor-full.

"We can sandbag," said Chris Lienhardt of the Antioch, Ill., Fire Department. "We can put plastic in it. Some of these people have gone out and gotten industrial pumps, but the water's going to go where it's going to go."

Tens of thousands of Midwesterners are still without power -- two days after crippling winds battered Chicago and surrounding suburbs.

Nature's two-pronged attack of wind and water damaged Mark Hembree's roof and left his basement full of mud.

"My daughter, all her stuff home from college is all ruined. It's a disaster," Hembree said.

The Hembrees are just one of the hundreds of families and businesses feeling the effects of record flooding.

And the economic impact is beginning to settle in.

"My business has floated away. Where's the mortgage payment going to come from," storm victim Marcus Dewitt asked.

Dewitt says he lost $30,000 of stock and supplies for his soap business, which floated away in the river surrounding his home. And unfortunately, like an estimated 90 percent of flood victims in southern Wisconsin, Dewitt doesn't have flood insurance.

"We don't have flood insurance; they told us we could drop it," he said.

Officials are saying there's at least $45 million in damages from this week's rains -- damages that have spread to some of the state's crucial farming communities.