The visuals were stunning: water from the Blue Earth River surged around a southern Minnesota dam, carrying a shipping container with it as it toppled utility poles, wrecked a substation and washed away part of a riverbank. A home teetered on the edge of an eroded slope as floodwaters rushed underneath.
Earlier this week, authorities said the Rapidan Dam near Mankato faced an “imminent threat” of collapse, but later they said an abutment had partially failed. The river swelled after an onslaught of rain pummeled the Midwest for days. More than 3 million people live in areas impacted by flooding, from Iowa to Nebraska to Minnesota to South Dakota.
