Losses sink in as flooding ebbs in Midwest

By Carey Gillam

WINFIELD, Missouri (Reuters) - Farmhouses appear to float on lakes, and farmers use boats to get to their barns. Businesses are shuttered as flooded roadways cut off customers. Rail lines, factories, river locks are shut down. Homeowners, who watched and waited and prayed, have seen dreams drowned.

After weeks of flooding through Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Indiana and Wisconsin, billions of dollars in damage are adding up from dozens of flooded towns, shaky bridges, overwhelmed utilities, and thousands of evacuees.

But the misery index from the Great Flood of 2008 has only started to sink in.

"We're just mentally and physically exhausted," said Winfield resident Carol Broseman, who fled her low-lying home for a shelter in this Missouri town on Saturday after flood waters engulfed her neighborhood. "I've cried all I can cry."

A levee break on Friday outside this town of about 800 people north of St. Louis sent a rush of muddy water across 3,000 acres of surrounding fields and prompted frantic efforts to hold back more water.

But the efforts failed shortly before dawn on Saturday as the river pushed through a six-foot- (1.8-metre-)high barrier of sandbags that stretched 2,000 feet along the community's eastern edge.

"I've got a lot of money tied up in that little house," said 59-year-old Karl Broseman, who had no insurance on the two-bedroom, now-flooded home he shares with his wife Carol. "I can rebuild. I'm going to get started as soon as I can."

"We really have no where else to go," said 65-year-old Gilbert Navarro, a retired laborer who said he spent the last two weeks praying his home would be spared only to see it hit with several feet of water on Saturday.