Residents of the small city of Nashville in Southern Illinois were ordered to immediately evacuate on Tuesday, July 16, just before the nearby dam failed to contain the waters coming from intense rainfall.
"Attention ... the Failure of the Nashville dam is imminent. Please evacuate your home at this time. If you are in the grey box, you need [to] evacuate now!" said the Washington County Emergency Management Agency on its Facebook account.
As stated by officials, the Nashville City Reservoir Dam "has been overtopped with flood waters."
"The Red Cross has been activated," officials said in a separate post, adding that a shelter was being used in Nashville's West Walnut Street.
Nashville, located in Washington County, around 50 miles southeast of St. Louis has a population of around 3,100. The entire county – population slightly under 14,000 – was under a flash flood warning at the time the evacuation was called, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
Officials also said between two to six inches of rain had fallen in the area over the past 24 hours before the evacuation order, and additional totals of 0.3 inches to one inch were possible for the warned area while adding that "life-threatening" flooding was ongoing. (Related: Montecito, California evacuated ahead of second wave of storms bringing rain, wind, flooding and mudslides.)
"Flash flooding is ongoing. Illinois State Police reported I-64 closed in both directions between mile markers 50 and 61," the NWS said.
Alex Haglund, a spokesperson with the Washington County Emergency Management Agency (EMA), told local news outlet KSDK-TV on July 16 that a secondary dam on the reservoir had failed.
Haglund noted that evacuation orders were able to reach 299 phones in Nashville and the nearby areas. Residents of at least 200 homes were able to evacuate to a nearby church. Many Nashville residents outside the evacuation area at the time of the order, including Haglund himself, were advised to remain outside the area.
Evacuation order lifted on the same day
The Army Corps of Engineers later examined the dam for safety with the use of a drone, the Washington County EMA said in an updated statement.
Authorities allowed residents who evacuated their homes to return on the night of July 16 after an inspection determined that the Nashville Reservoir Dam was safe.
"At this time, without further rain, the immediate safety concern has passed. The secondary dam reacted as designed, helping prevent a full dam failure," the agency stated. It added that repairs will have to be completed soon to "maintain the integrity of the dam."
"Currently, we have a lot of other flooding that's not related to the dam, and that has made it so that there are no major road routes that are consistently accessible in our county," Haglund stated.
During the emergency, the county activated Red Cross assistance and established an evacuation center at a church, while emergency management worked to repair the dam. No injuries have been reported, but county officials cited considerable property damage from the flooding.
Footage from Nashville shows cars inundated by floodwaters, and water creeping up and into homes and other buildings. Those who had to evacuate sometimes had to wade through waist-deep waters. One woman had to be rescued from her home due to mobility issues.
A flood watch warning stayed in effect through July 17.
The rainfall that affected the area was one of a series of storms that swept across the state and was part of a bigger system that caused tornadoes and tornado warnings in other areas, including in Chicago and in Des Moines, Iowa.
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Watch the video below about the catastrophic flooding along the Big Sioux River near Sioux City, Iowa.
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