Ohio River Region Braces for Flooding

Louisville, Ky., bolted the gates shut in its flood wall Tuesday as the highest water along the Ohio River in 30 years pushed downstream, swamping one town after another and swelling the ranks of people driven from their homes.

The Ohio was out of its banks from West Virginia to Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, and the water was not expected to crest in most places until today or later. Thousands of evacuees waited for the river to start dropping; thousands more downstream moved out as the water rolled closer.

“All I’ve got is the clothes on my back,” Mike Donley said after leaving his home in New Richmond, Ohio.

The river was engorged by runoff from record downpours over the weekend that already had forced thousands of people from their homes along smaller streams in Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia. A total of 50 deaths had been blamed on the flooding and the weekend’s tornadoes.

Most states had no estimate of evacuees, but Kentucky officials estimated tens of thousands in that state alone.

President Clinton declared 14 counties disaster areas in Ohio and nine in Kentucky, making them eligible for federal assistance.

The Ohio reached 62.4 feet at Cincinnati, the first time it had passed 60 feet there since 1967.