EDINBURGH -
Our extremely dry weather with little rain has central Indiana getting dangerously close to drought conditions right now.
It's a stark contrast to four years ago.
On June 7, 2008, much of south central Indiana experienced one of the worst floods in state history. Even four years later, it's still fresh.
Ruth Straugh clearly remembers the day fast and furious floodwaters rushed four feet high into her Edinburgh home.
"It just kept raining. But it wasn't the rain so much as the way it came in like a river and it just 'Whoosh'," Straugh recalled.
Thursday, she thumbed through photographs of the flood, which caused $80,000 in damage to her home and destroyed most of her possessions.
"That's all we had left out of the house," Straugh said, "And this (flooded street) is from my front door to the neighbors right over there."
Rivers and streams, buoyed by steady rain that spring, suddenly swelled and overflowed their banks.
From Franklin and Columbus to Greenwood and Martinsville, the June 2008 flood damaged hundreds of homes, destroyed the inside of businesses and government offices and decimated hospitals.
Millions in FEMA disaster money had to pour in to help.
"It came quickly. I think it caught everybody, I won't say off-guard, but sure wasn't expecting that kind of water," said Forrest Sutton, Johnson County Emergency Management Director. "It was one-tenth of an inch shy of being a thousand year event. So that's pretty significant. Eleven inches in 10 hours or so."
A lot has changed in four years. In Franklin, we found a few homes that have been built up about four feet higher than they used to be. Many empty lots in the flood plain used to have homes on them. They've since been bought by the city and torn down.
Some homes are still going through that process in northwestern Johnson County. Meanwhile, dams have been upgraded in Princes Lakes.
Warning sirens have been added too, not only for tornados, but also extreme flood events.
Columbus Regional Hospital, which suffered $171 million in flood damage, now has a new flood wall and 15 flood gates. The flood wall, made of limestone, surrounds the hospital and rises two feet above a 100-year flood level.
Storm sewer and drain upgrades also continue throughout south-central Indiana.
"That's the big thing for infrastructure is just keeping what they have cleaned out and adding new to it," Sutton explained.
For Ruth Straugh, who's since moved, the prevention strategies against future disasters are welcome changes. But her personal photos from 2008 still bring fear of another flood.
"There's not a day when it rains, even living over there in the apartment, that I don't think it's not gonna happen again," she said.
One of the worst floods in Indiana history hit south central Indiana on June 7, 2008.
Some homes have been built up several feet above ground level after the flood.
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