The tornado warning was bad enough — 6,000 Ball State students rousted from their rooms and herded into dorm basements at 2:30 in the morning. But the cleanup from Monday morning's heavy rains will last longer than the annoyance of a ruined night of sleep.
The region received between 2 and 3 inches of rain in just a few hours, according to Mark Slusher, deputy director of Delaware County Emergency Management. That caused flash flooding, which closed more than three dozen streets and soaked numbers of basements.
"As you see it recede, you assume it's better," said Lee Ann Mengelt, coordinator of disaster relief and preparedness for Hoosier Heartland, the local Red Cross affiliate. "The streets appear to be getting better, but there'll be people dealing with this for a long time to come."
Mengelt said about 15 people visited Hoosier Heartland on Monday for coffee, dry socks and a place to collect their thoughts and get ready to face the challenge of a damaged home.
Slusher said more than 100,000 sandbags were used around Delaware County to help quell water damage.
"It's hectic sometimes, but we've been in this for a while," the former Red Cross logistical specialist said. "We don't like it, but we're glad we have that experience."
Ball State Public Safety Director Gene Burton is no weather forecaster, but he's been on the job for more than 30 years. He calls Monday morning's storm the first flash flood on campus in at least 15 years.
"I was still working on the midnight shift," he said. "[The last flash flood] was during the summer 15 or 20 years ago."
Burton said UPD responded to eight calls in which people reported being stuck in their vehicles. Officers had to get creative in their rescue efforts, driving through alleys and on sidewalks to reach stranded students and professors.
Assistant geography professor Dave Call said the downpour was the result of a progression of thunder storms. The ground was already wet from the snow on Friday, and a gush of rain didn't help.
At 1 a.m., it was 60 degrees in Muncie, 39 in Fort Wayne and in Southern Indiana it was in the 70s, he said.
"This is a dramatic temperature contrast, and it led to [severe thunderstorms]," Call said.
Across campus, students at all 17 residence halls were shuffled to the basements, but Matt Kovach, assistant director of Housing and Residence Life, said resident assistants couldn't force them out of their rooms.
"They can bang on the doors on the way out, but we want to make sure they aren't in danger either," Kovach said. "The hardest thing is when people aren't following the safe directions. We can't force anybody to stay in the safe location, but we do encourage them."
Kevin Kenyon, director of Facilities Planning and Management, identified a dozen campus buildings that had some flood damage. The water was ankle deep at Burris Laboratory School and there was five inches of standing water in the basement of the Applied Technology Building.
"It was worse than I thought," Kenyon said. "There was three and a half inches, but that's rare. It's not practical for us to design and maintain buildings for that. We're equipped to handle this."
University Spokesperson Tony Proudfoot said the flash flood and possible tornado didn't elicit a text message or e-mail alert because they didn't pose a threat to the general population around campus.
"Our emergency protocol states that severe weather pops up so quickly it's not helpful to send an alert," Proudfoot said.
The university directs students to subscribe to third-party sources such as weather.gov.
"They send out information at about the same time our emergency management staff gets it," he said.
With feet of standing water in the streets, freshman psychology major Sarah Bunner made light of the situation by romping in the rain.
"[My friend Josh and I] just went around outside and we had these rain boots," she said. "The water actually went up past them so my boots were full of water.
"We came back at 3 a.m. and there was a sign on the dorm check in counter that said go to the basement. Everyone had just woken up and they look at us and we're covered in water," she said.
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