Ike remnants cause Midwest deaths, blackouts

Major flooding is predicted this week for towns in Missouri, including Arnold, where the Meramec River is expected to reach a major flood stage for the third time this year. Fortunately, Arnold still had sandbags in place that were piled up during the first flood in March.

The Missouri River is likely to reach more than 11 feet above flood stage in Missouri's St. Charles County, threatening seven private levees.

Illinois officials said they would ask Gov. Rod Blagojevich to issue a disaster declaration for the city of Chicago and surrounding Cook County, where dozens of people were rescued from rising water by boat.

Elsewhere across Illinois, volunteers sandbagged the banks of the overflowing DuPage and Des Plaines Rivers. In Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, truckloads of sand were delivered to help hold back the rising North Branch of the Chicago River.

Also in Illinois, the weekend's record rainfall and flooding were threatening corn and soybean yields. University of Illinois agricultural economist Stu Ellis said the rain could provide the right environment for fungus to spread in soybean fields and further weaken corn crops, already fragile from the summer's drought.

A busy stretch of Interstate 80/94 just east of the Indiana-Illinois state line was closed by flooding Monday morning and electricity was out for more than 100,000 homes and business in a large swath of southern Indiana.

Seven people died in the flooding and high wind in Indiana, the state's Department of Homeland Security said Monday. Among them were a teacher and his father who were sucked into a culvert and drowned Sunday while trying to rescue a 10-year-old boy from a flooded ditch, state officials said.

Elsewhere in the Midwest, the weather was blamed for four deaths in Ohio, four in Missouri, two in Tennessee and one each in Arkansas and Kentucky.

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