DELHI, Iowa, July 25 (UPI) -- Iowa's rain-swollen Maquoketa River continued to rise Sunday, a day after it breached a section of a dam and inundated farmland downstream, forecasters said.
The National Weather Service said the river would top out late Sunday at 11 feet over flood stage, breaking a record for the river set in 2002.
The cresting comes too late for residents downstream from the Lake Delhi dam, which crumbled Saturday and unleashed a torrent of water that wrecked several homes, flooded fields and caused about 1,200 people to evacuate the area.
Officials told the Des Moines Register that five homes in a resort community at the base of the lake were destroyed, but the sparsely populated nature of the area helped dissipate the flood quickly.
"I think the rest of the town's going to be fine," Hopkinton Fire Chief Craig Wilson told the newspaper. "We've got so much farmland that spreads the river out."
Nevertheless, continuing rain across Iowa has other rivers on the rise, and Gov. Chet Culver has mobilized the National Guard.
