As Michigan floods, president threatens
Trump tweets about election while state battles historic flooding
It is a crisis unfolding within a crisis.
Tuesday, the same day Michigan became the fourth state to surpass 5,000 cumulative deaths from COVID-19, floodwaters breached the Edenville and Sanford dams and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer began evacuating thousands of residents of Midland County, saying the downtown area of the city of 40,000 could be under nine feet of water by Wednesday.
“This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before,” Whitmer said, advising residents of the projected flood areas approximately 200 kilometres northwest of Detroit to get as far away as possible as soon as possible despite ongoing coronavirus stay-at-home orders. “It’s hard to believe that we’re in the midst of a100-year crisis, a global pandemic and that we’re also dealing with a flooding event that looks to be the worst in 500 years,” she said at a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
Images from news agencies Wednesday showed waters flooding streets around Midland, submerging some buildings almost entirely, as people waded knee-deep or paddled small boats through streets transformed into rivers by the flood. Local reporter Tim Pamplin tweeted images and video from his kayak tour of the area including devastation in downtown Sanford, where car tops and lightposts peeked out from above the water and a building housing a pet grooming business had collapsed.
At shelters set up in local schools, staff tried to maintain pandemic social-distancing practices with beds set far apart and staff and volunteers equipped with personal protective equipment. Whitmer asked evacuating residents to continue wearing masks and maintain distancing as best they could under the circumstances. According to The Associated Press, approximately 10,000 residents were evacuated Tuesday evening.
Early Wednesday, the waters continued to rise and the Tittabawassee River reached a record level of more than 10 metres after the dams broke following days of unusually high rainfall. The river level was predicted to continue rising until Wednesday evening, to a possible crest of 11.6 metres. Also Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump tweeted a statement about the state’s government — not addressing the flooding crisis but instead making an election-related threat. “Breaking: Michigan sends absentee ballots to 7.7 million people ahead of primaries and the general election. This was done illegally and without authorization by a rogue secretary of state. I will ask to hold up funding to Michigan if they want to go down this voter fraud path!”
Like some other states, Michigan has recently taken steps to ensure voters can participate in its August primary and the November general election even in the event coronavirus hinders in-person voting. Though Trump himself voted by absentee ballot this year in Florida, he has consistently opposed such efforts to expand remote voting, which he claims are an invitation to fraud that would help his opponents.
Whitmer said she was formally asking the federal emergency management agency, FEMA, for assistance, and said it was “disheartening” to see Trump’s tweet. She noted Trump was scheduled to come to Michigan on Thursday and she expected to be able to brief him then on the scope of the situation.
“I would appreciate any federal partnership that wants to stay focused on solving problems and not get into politics. We’ve got to take politics out of this crisis moment. And remember, we’re all Americans. We are all fighting for our lives here and for our economy, and we all got to get this right.”
Trump addressed the flooding directly a few hours after his first tweet in another one: “My team is closely monitoring the flooding in Central Michigan — Stay SAFE and listen to local officials. Our brave first responders are once again stepping up to serve their fellow citizens, THANK YOU!” Trump followed up, tweeting he’d sent military and FEMA teams to the state.
Among those evacuating in Midland County were employees at the Dow Inc. chemical company headquarters. A Bloomberg News report noted that potentially dangerous chemicals, including Styrofoam and pesticides, are made by companies including Dow in the industrial and commercial area potentially affected by the catastrophic rush of floodwaters.
Whitmer said she’d been in contact with Dow executives and understood that their emergency plan “is working” to prevent any “real damage from happening” at the chemical site.
Witmer said that no casualties had been reported.
At the press conference, Midland city manager Brad Kaye said the extent of the damage to the Sanford dam was still unknown and that if that dam were to collapse entirely it could cause more extreme flooding and damage.
“At this point in time it is overflowing … It’s not entirely clear what the structure is below the water surface,” he said. “Could it get worse? Yes, if the entire structure were to go, and the water were to come in a very significant, serious, immediate impact, there would be a much higher surge that would come down the river. And that could raise the level much more quickly than what we’re seeing right at the moment.”
Resident Catherine Sias, who lives about 1.5 kilometres from the breached Edenville dam, said she evacuated after a series of emergency alerts appeared on her mobile phone. “While packing, there were tons of police and fire trucks going up and down the roads,” she said. “As far as I know, all of our neighbours got out.”
Whitmer encouraged residents to continue to persevere through both the COVID-19 crisis and the flood.
“We’re going to get through this,” she said. “It is a tough time, to be sure, but we are going to get through this. We know that tough times don’t last, but tough people do.”