Indiana’s disaster relief fund held $2m before August floods
Ten days after the floodwater receded from Cambridge City’s main street, signs of the disaster are all around. Abandoned cars, toilets and bathtubs are strewn across parks and side streets. Garages have been lifted from their foundations and moved by the rushing water. Dumpsters up and down the street overflow with people’s belongings, and red paint sprayed on homes marks the houses that water rescue teams have cleared.
Flooding from Creitz Creek, a tributary of the Whitewater River, has damaged one-third, or about 250, of all houses in the town of 1,700 people in southeastern Indiana. About 175 of those homes have experienced significant damage.
By mid-morning on Aug. 12, about 10 inches of rain had fallen in Cambridge City — three times the average amount for the entire month of August for the town — and the floodwaters had risen almost five feet inside Rick Keasling’s home. Keasling recalled water entering his basement from the west that morning while he fought it with a pump, then reversing direction as the river swelled. He, his wife and his dog fled shortly before the water reached that height.
“The dog had to swim to the truck. We’ve lost everything on the first floor and in the basement. All the big appliances,” Keasling said. “We’ve had some water in the basement [in the past] but nothing like this; not even close.”
Record flooding across swaths of central and eastern Indiana has destroyed critical infrastructure, made more than 1,000 people homeless and taken seven lives. In northwestern Indiana, hundreds of thousands of people in Gary, the only majority-Black city in the state, were left without electricity for more than two weeks after a derecho struck the region on Aug. 11. A section of Interstate 70, one of the most important regional highways connecting the populated eastern U.S. with the Midwest, was washed away a few miles north of Cambridge City.
President Donald Trump has approved Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster aid for more than 50 counties around Indiana, but the aid is capped at $5 million — an amount many say does not go far enough. State leaders estimate the cost of this month’s storms and flooding at about $5 billion.
Gov. Mike Braun submitted a disaster declaration to FEMA on Aug. 21 that would allow for the release of millions of dollars in federal support to flood victims; the agency has not responded. FEMA under the current Trump administration has turned down more than 30 disaster declarations and is taking longer to approve requests when it grants approval.
Indiana’s state legislature, where Republicans hold a supermajority, has repeatedly refused to fund climate-related initiatives in the state. Indiana cut state funding for state environmental agencies by 19% between 2010 and 2024, while neighboring Ohio and Michigan increased resources by 19% and 78% respectively. Twice in recent years, the senate’s environmental affairs committee has refused to consider legislation for a climate solutions taskforce for the state. The state’s disaster relief fund stood at just $2 million before the flooding — it has since been raised to $5 million. Indiana is also one of 18 states with no climate action plan, according to the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.
Beth Hall, director of the Indiana state climate office, pointed to the role of a warmer atmosphere in the event’s intensity. “Climate change played a role in the intensity of the event since the warmer atmosphere would have allowed for more vapor to ultimately condense and fall as rain,” Hall said. “Additionally, the warmer temperatures may have caused the heat dome to be the large size it was and to stick around longer than normal.”
Cambridge City has only a moderate risk from flooding, according to First Street, a flood risk non-profit. But nearly all of the properties affected by flooding in the town are located in a FEMA flood zone AE, which signifies a high-risk flood area where there is a 1% or greater chance of flooding in a particular year. According to FEMA mapping, many buildings, including a former elementary school, are located in a “regulatory floodway.”
In a town where the median household income is about 60% of the national level, many residents have been forced to go without flood insurance because of prohibitively high premiums and deductible charges.
Small businesses can apply for a county grant of up to $5,000, but the few that have been able to open their doors are struggling. “We’ve had some people [come in] but it’s not normal,” said Tami Hall, who runs Vinton House Antiques on Cambridge City’s main street and lost most of its basement equipment, including its HVAC system, in the flooding. “I think people think that everything’s closed.”
Tom Saunders, who serves on the town board in the neighboring community of Lewisville, which was also hit by flooding, said smaller villages in particular are struggling in the flood’s aftermath. “I have a gentleman, he’s 69 years old, he lost his mobile home, his four cars, everything. He’s living with me right now. We’re past a week of this and we still don’t know anything,” he said. “There’s nobody to help.”
Ten days after disaster struck, volunteers are staffing a food truck that serves hotdogs, chips and drinks to about 70 people each day. Residents have also had to deal with looting, and Keasling said that while he had some flood insurance coverage, it will not come close to covering the damage incurred.
“There’s so many people displaced,” he said, as the sound of industrial dehumidifiers whirs through the ground floor of his home, where nothing but the wooden structural studs and floor are left. “Down in Connersville, they’re tearing down houses today.”
The flooding that swamped Cambridge City is part of the same August storm system that killed at least seven people across Indiana and drove the White River past its 1913 record, as MSI covered in its report on the record crest and its report on the statewide death toll.