Storms and flooding killed at least six people in Indiana between August 11 and August 16 as the White River rose to record levels. US President Donald Trump approved the state's request for federal emergency assistance on August 15 while rescues and evacuations continued.
Nearly 130,000 utility customers remained without power at midday on August 16, down from a peak of about 300,000, and the governor's office reported more than 350 evacuations elsewhere in the state. The casualty, outage and evacuation figures are time-stamped snapshots rather than final totals.
Extreme rain sends the White River above 1913 marks
The US National Weather Service said more than 28 centimeters of rain fell in parts of Indiana over two days. The White River crested above 7.3 meters at Anderson and Noblesville, surpassing records set in 1913.
The Midwestern Regional Climate Center's account puts Anderson's March 1913 crest at the equivalent of 7.19 meters at the city's Waterworks gauge site. That historical comparison is specific to the gauge and its reference level; it is not a uniform measure of water depth across Anderson.
State and federal declarations cover different steps
Indiana Governor Mike Braun issued Executive Order 26-21, declaring a statewide disaster emergency because of flooding, severe weather, tornadic activity and a derecho. The order established the state-level emergency for the response.
Indiana National Guard vehicles assisted with rescue work, while Indianapolis firefighters had rescued 95 people and 45 pets by late August 15. The sources reviewed for this report did not establish that every affected household was eligible for direct federal payments, so the presidential approval should not be read as a blanket grant to residents.
A federal flood zone is a regulatory threshold
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) defines the “100-year floodplain” as the area with a 1-percent chance of being equaled or exceeded in any year. The label does not mean that a flood of that scale can happen only once in a century; the probability applies again each year.
First Street says its private model includes high-intensity rainfall, overflowing rivers and streams, tides, storm surge, elevation, climate and flood history, and estimates that six million US properties face substantial flood risk not accounted for by FEMA. That is First Street's model result, not a FEMA audit or a property-level assessment of the Indiana flooding.
APPI News could not find a public comparison matching the August 2026 Indiana flood footprint against the effective FEMA maps property by property. National estimates and findings from other disasters therefore cannot show how many homes in this event were outside the mapped 1-percent annual-chance floodplain.
Sources and further reading
- At least 6 people have died from days of storms and record-setting flooding in Indiana（Associated Press）
- Indiana authorities say at least 5 people have died as severe weather crosses the state（Associated Press）
- Executive Order 26-21: Declaring a statewide disaster emergency（Office of the Governor of Indiana）
- The Great Flood of 1913: Anderson, Indiana（Midwestern Regional Climate Center）
- Emergency Management Institute glossary（US Federal Emergency Management Agency）
- Flood Model Methodology: Calculating property-level risk（First Street）
