MIDLAND, Mich. — Along Main Street in the central Michigan city of Midland, residents crowded the sidewalk on Wednesday, watching the rising waters of the Tittabawassee River in stunned despair. Floodwaters lapped less than a block away, and a row of businesses, their electricity cut off, stood dark and quiet.
For many, including Jeff De Vaney, the owner of Amazing Deli, the sight was pain on top of pain. Mr. De Vaney was hoping to fully reopen his sandwich shop soon and begin to recoup the revenue he has lost during the coronavirus crisis. He had just brought in portable coolers to store all the extra stock he expected to need.
Then came the flood.
“We can’t seem to catch a break,” Mr. De Vaney said.
Michigan, one of the states hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, was left reeling again on Wednesday after days of torrential rainfall breached two privately owned dams the night before. Thousands of residents were forced to flee their homes, and much of Midland, the home of Dow Chemical and some of its plants, was submerged in murky floodwaters.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who has clashed with Republicans over the state’s response to the coronavirus, found herself in an ever more complicated position: urging residents to flee their homes to avoid the rising waters while maintaining social distancing to avoid the spreading virus. Midland County has had 76 known cases, a relatively small number in a battered state.
“It’s hard to believe that we’re in the middle of a 100-year crisis, a global pandemic, and we’re also dealing with a flooding event that looks to be the worst in 500 years,” Ms. Whitmer said.
For years, federal regulators had warned that a dam in nearby Edenville Township could rupture. They had chided its corporate owner, Boyce Hydro Power, for failing to make required structural changes to the dam, revoked the company’s license and declared that Boyce Hydro had displayed “a pattern of delay and indifference to addressing dam safety requirements.”
On Tuesday night, the dam gave way, sending a torrent of water gushing into streets, houses and businesses, and threatening Dow Chemical, the producer of plastics that sits along the Tittabawassee River. Ten miles south of the Edenville dam, water was spilling over a second dam, a structure feared to be on the verge of collapse on Wednesday.
By then, floodwaters had crept high enough that red stop signs were barely peeking out in downtown Midland, a city of 42,000 residents about 130 miles northwest of Detroit. Evacuees, carrying suitcases and wearing face masks, arrived at local schools that had been repurposed as emergency shelters.
Officials said there were no known injuries or deaths tied to the floods. One man who had driven his car into surging water was rescued.
Ms. Whitmer declared a state of emergency for Midland County and said she would appeal for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. By Wednesday, 130 soldiers from the Michigan National Guard were dispatched to help state police evacuate residents.
In balmy spring temperatures on Wednesday morning, a pair of jet skiers roared down the swollen river, which was expected to rise nearly 10 feet above its flood level.
The site of the city’s farmers’ market along the banks of the river was swamped, while floodwaters were beginning to lap at the bottom of a pedestrian bridge crossing the river.
“It’s disastrous,” said Sue Baranski, who had evacuated her home in nearby Sanford as the floodwaters rose. “Between the devastation from the flooding and the virus and the small-business owners trying to make their way through that, it’s just too much.”
Dow Chemical said that floodwaters had reached containment ponds near its plants, but that there was no environmental damage or threat to residents.
“Dow’s local emergency operations center is fully activated and is implementing its flood preparedness plan,” the company said in a statement. “All operating units on site have been safely shut down, except for facilities needed for safely managing chemical containment, and all railcars are secured.”
One of the largest chemical companies in the world, with $43 billion of revenue in 2019, Dow employs more than 4,000 people at its headquarters and manufacturing sites in Midland.
The company’s influence is apparent everywhere in town, which houses Midland Center for the Arts, Dow Gardens and H.H. Dow High School. Dow helped pay for a rebuilt downtown, transforming it into a wide pedestrian thoroughfare filled with benches, Adirondack chairs, fire pits and blooming trees.
A short drive from downtown, at least 140 people evacuated from the flooding to Midland High School, a makeshift shelter. About 100 people spent the night on Tuesday; another 40 opted to sleep in their cars instead because of worries about the coronavirus.
Dot Costello, 101, had slept on a cot in the school after buses picked up residents from her apartment building.
“I’m afraid to see what’s happened to my city,” she said. “I do not like 2020 right now.”
Another displaced Midland resident, Steve Blackhurst, 64, a retired lawyer, woke up Wednesday morning to a flooded yard and water pouring through his basement windows.
“They had to bring an airboat to come get me out,” he said. “You’ve just got to get through it and make sure you stay alive. I’m going to miss my Scotch before I go to bed tonight.”
Brad Kaye, the Midland city manager, said that damage had been extensive, with the first floor of the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library swamped and four of the city’s 42 sewage pumping stations underwater and not functioning. All the while, public health concerns remained.
“We’ve still got Covid-19, and it didn’t go away miraculously because we had a flood,” he said.
Many in Midland expressed anger and frustration over the breaches of the dams, where failures were expected to require a costly and extensive cleanup.
According to a database kept by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the two dams were rated in the highest risk category, along with about 300 other dams in the state. Both dams were last inspected in 2018.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission revoked the license of the Edenville dam in 2018, citing the failure of Boyce Hydro to put in place safety measures that would help prevent a flood. That year, a state agency assumed regulatory authority of the dam.
According to federal documents, Boyce Hydro insisted there was little chance that a catastrophic flood could happen.
“Boyce Hydro states that the probability of such a flood occurring in the next 5 to 10 years ranges from 5 to 10 in one million,” one report said.
Late Wednesday, Boyce Hydro issued a statement expressing distress over what had transpired. It said the company’s operators had made efforts to lower water levels and prepare for the incoming rain, but that a combination of rainfall and high winds reached extraordinary levels.
“We sympathize with those who have lost property and been forced to relocate due to the resulting flooding in Gladwin and Midland Counties,” the statement said.
Nick Assendelft, a spokesman for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, said that inspectors in October 2018 found that the dam was in fair structural condition, but had concerns about its spillway capacity.
A lack of investment and maintenance combined with excessive rainfall were factors in its failure, he said in an email.
Kathleen Gray reported from Midland, and Julie Bosman from Chicago. Neal E. Boudette contributed reporting from Ann Arbor, Mich., and Ivan Penn from Burbank, Calif.
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