Flooding fills tunnels leading to Detroit airport, forces water rescues in Ohio and Las Vegas
The latest round of heavy rain has led to more flooding in parts of the nation, including an Ohio highway where people were rescued from their cars and in Las Vegas, where the strip was covered with water, officials said.
In Lakewood, Ohio, 10 people were rescued from seven cars on a section of Interstate 90 on Wednesday night after their vehicles got stuck in the water that reached to the windows, Capt. Gary Stone said. The highway was shut down in both directions at one point. No one was hurt.
“It was a bad mess down there,” Stone said, noting that while Lakewood is often hit by bad storms coming off of Lake Erie, this kind of flooding was unheard of.
Up to 8 inches of rain (20 centimeters) hit some areas of north-central Ohio, according to Brian Mitchell with the National Weather Service in Cleveland. The northeast part of the state saw at least 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) from midday Wednesday into Thursday morning, with winds reaching up to 60 mph (37 kph) in some areas.
Lorain County, which received around 6 inches (15.2 centimeters) of rain, canceled its county fair Thursday due to “storms, flooding, closed roads and damage.”
Parts of southeast Michigan also got over 5 inches by Thursday morning, said Brian Cromwell, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Detroit.
“We were getting rainfall rates above an inch an hour, which is pretty significant,” Cromwell said, adding that more severe thunderstorms with torrential rains were possible over the region Thursday evening.
The rain led to street flooding in the Detroit area and included tunnels leading to Detroit Metropolitan Airport in the suburb of Romulus, officials said.
Flooded underground roadways that connect airport terminals blocked travelers from part of the airport, a spokeswoman for the Wayne County Airport Authority said in a statement. Travelers with flights out of the McNamara Terminal were urged to check the status of their flights.
The storms caused power outages across Michigan, concentrated in the Detroit area, with more than 58,000 homes and businesses in the dark as of 10 a.m., according to poweroutage.us.
In Las Vegas, a fast-moving storm flooded parts of the city, including the strip. Police started getting calls shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday for help and rescued one person, Metropolitan Police Department Lt. Miguel Ibarra told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. But he said there was another person who was believed to be missing.
Police attempted to rescue another person later, around 9:30 p.m., but were unsuccessful and were still searching, Ibarra said. He said there may be two other victims.
A message seeking further comment was left with the department.
Accumulations were less than an inch, the National Weather Service said. More rain was in the forecast Thursday.
“We do have so much moisture” lingering from tropical storms Hilary and the remnants of Harold, meteorologist Jenn Varian said Thursday morning.
