NORFOLK, Neb. This city got good news late Tuesday night when the swollen Elkhorn River crested and slowly began to recede, topping a frantic day of sand-bagging operations, neighborhood evacuations and the collapse of a bridge that left a railroad worker missing.
But the potential for major flooding remained, Norfolk officials said.
The city issued a mandatory evacuation of neighborhoods south of Washington Avenue and a voluntary evacuation of the area directly south of Omaha Avenue. An American Red Cross shelter remained open at the city auditorium.
“We need everyone's help and ask for full cooperation,” said Mayor Sue Fuchtman, who spent part of her evening sandbagging at Affiliated Foods, one of the city's largest employers.
Nearby, at Omaha Avenue and Highway 81, water was inching toward the front doors of the Sunset Plaza Mall, despite the best efforts of volunteers.
Fuchtman said sand-bagging would continue through the early morning hours.
The river crested at 16.85 feet shortly before 11 p.m., falling short of an earlier projection of 17.1 feet. By 4 a.m. Wednesday, the river had dropped to 16.3 feet.
"It started its downward trend," said Dave Eastlack of the National Weather Service in Valley.
Thunderstorms are possible in eastern Nebraska on Wednesday, but they wouldn't bring significant amounts of rain, he said: "Nothing that hangs over us for a long time and doesn't move."
At midday Tuesday, a railroad truss bridge had collapsed into the flooded river near Norfolk. One railroad worker was missing after the bridge toppled into the river.
Few details were available.
Three employees of Nebraska Central Railroad Co. had been inspecting the bridge when it collapsed, said Sheila Schukei, spokeswoman for Norfolk emergency management.
Early reports indicated that all three men fell into the water and that two got out, Schukei said. Local emergency officials received a call for help at 12:50 p.m.
Bethany Raabe was nearby when the bridge collapsed and said she “heard a really loud noise.”
“We heard screaming and didn't know if there was a train or if someone was drowning,” Raabe said.
A National Guard helicopter carrying state officials on a survey of flood damage was diverted to assist in the search.
Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy said the officials searched for about an hour before running low on fuel.
“We had seven sets of eyes looking, and so you know, you have some hope you're going to see the person,” he said. “But we didn't.”
The railroad bridge that collapsed was the only one that provided access over the Elkhorn River for some of Norfolk's major industries, including Nucor Steel, Norfolk Iron & Metal and the Louis Dreyfus Commodities ethanol plant.
Those industries now will have to move their products in and out of Norfolk by truck, a Nucor employee said.
Throughout the afternoon, rescuers searched in vain by air for the lost railroad worker.
About 40 miles upstream of Norfolk in the village of Clearwater, Fire Chief Steve Hankla was helping to maintain a 5-foot-high dike that hundreds of volunteers helped build Sunday and Monday to protect the village of about 380 people.
“We've got probably seven or eight homes that are almost going to be totaled,” Hankla said.
The river slowly began dropping at Ewing and Neligh, two towns upstream of Norfolk that also had seen record flooding.
As the floodwaters receded, the extent of damage was becoming more apparent, Sheehy said.
“You can see where it's gone up into fields and can begin to make out a little bit more of what used to be a road,” he said.
In the Omaha metropolitan area, the Elkhorn and Platte Rivers had begun subsiding.
The gauge on the Elkhorn River nearest to Omaha is at Waterloo. The water level there was expected to drop below flood stage Wednesday.
Another crest was expected Friday into Saturday as the surge of floodwaters from the Norfolk area arrives. But because there is so much capacity in the Elkhorn at Waterloo, the surge might not push the river above flood stage, the weather service said.
The Elkhorn peaked at Waterloo on Monday at 18.67 feet. At its peak there, the Elkhorn was carrying 30 times its median flow, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Lake McConaughy, the state's largest reservoir, was nearly 2 feet higher Tuesday than a week ago because of high flows pouring into the lake from the North Platte River. The lake was 79 percent full, compared with nearly 53 percent full a year ago.
Cropland near Loomis and Bertrand in south-central Nebraska was so soggy from rain that farmers were being allowed to pump water into irrigation canals from their fields.
Emergency management officials in western Iowa said rivers and creeks were flowing bank to bank, but there was no significant flooding except on some low-lying farmland.
The World-Herald News Service contributed to this report, which includes material from the Associated Press.
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