Local News

Floods Wreck Homes, Drain Lake In Wisconsin Dells

Breach Renders Lake Delton A Series Of Mud Flats

WISCONSIN DELLS, Wis. (CBS) ― There is a flood of trouble across parts of the Midwest as violent storms turn small towns into virtual islands. 

A number of homes in the Wisconsin Dells along Lake Delton were swept away Monday. Three straight days of rain led to the unbelievable scene as one after another, the homes broke apart and plunged into the lake.

Afterward, the lake was left completely dry.

Wisconsin Gov. James Doyle Jr. has declared an emergency for at least 30 counties. The Wisconsin National Guard has been sent to the remains of Lake Delton.

CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports not only did homes in Lake Delton crumble and fall, but a beautiful lake etched in the childhood memories of so many Chicagoans is now completely gone.

It was just after 9 a.m. Monday when the bucolic lake became a raging river, tearing away at its banks, and slowly pulling the houses perched precariously above the newly-cut channel down into the swirling waters.

One by one they splintered, split apart and collapsed, the ground on which they were built washed away by the fast emptying lake.

"It's just surreal. We don't even believe it yet. You know, it just doesn't feel real. I mean, it'll settle in and we'll have to figure out what we're going to do, but, yeah, everything," said homeowner Tina Pekar. "Everything we own is there. It's just our dream house. Now it's gone."

Early Monday morning the Wisconsin River was separated by several hundred yards from Lake Delton. Highway A ran across it.

Then water started spilling over the road, and washed away the embankment and water started spilling from Lake Delton like a plug pulled from a bathtub.

"It happened instantaneously, I mean, right in front of your eyes you saw this humungous mound of earth just go, and of course right after that the road went," said Lake Delton Village Trustee Tom Diehl.

What just Sunday was a 245-acre, 10-foot deep lake, filled each summer with vacationers from Chicago and Milwaukee and elsewhere, is now a muddy mess. You can walk across parts of it. The only casting being done is to throw lines across a narrow stretch of fast moving water, so workers can start stretching temporary sewer lines.

The breach came not from the dam that fills the lake, which remained intact, but from a low spot on the lake.

"If you're familiar with the Dells area, you know where the green and white ducks (tour boats) – the original Wisconsin Dells Ducks – leave Lake Delton. It's a low spot, and that's where the lake breached. " said Wisconsin Dells Mayor Eric Helland. "It went across the roadway, and when it started, it started to erode quite a distance, all the way to the river – probably a couple hundred yards – 400 yards."

It happened just as the summer season was about to get underway. Visitors were starting to arrive, along with summer workers, 150 at the legendary Tommy Bartlett Show & Exploratory alone. Its 4,000-seat stadium was empty Monday night, the water ski jumps no longer floating on the surface of the lake, but resting in the mud.

"All the people whose commerce was dependent on the lake and just to see it vanish before your eyes something was a horrifying experience," Diehl said.

Helland said the loss of Lake Delton would be damaging to the economy, but other attractions would keep tourists coming.

"It's a hard one to gauge. It's so diverse these days with all the things that we have to offer, but the loss of Lake Delton most assuredly will affect us," Helland said.

Many people are coming specifically to see the damage that Lake Delton has sustained, Helland said. 

But Tommy Bartlett's show will be land-based for the foreseeable future. As for the future of Lake Delton, that depends on how fast a new dam can be built and the lake refilled. But with a 100-yard-wide gash to be filled in, built to hold back a huge lake, this will not be a quick fix.

Helland said he hoped the lake could be re-filled before the end of the summer season.

"We've gotten a lot of things done over our years, and we believe that we'll be able to do that too," Helland said.

Still, as the sun rose on Tuesday morning, Lake Delton had been reduced to a series of mud flats. The only sign of water was a channel running through it taking water from nearby Mirror Lake, which continued to overflow its dams, to the Wisconsin River.

On Monday, people were trying to throw fish back into the water to save their lives. But on Tuesday morning, clamshells littered the muddy remains of the lake like old tin cans.

Resorts on the lake were left high and dry, and the people of the legendary summer playground at Wisconsin Dells woke up to anything but a good morning.

(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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