COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio residents removed piles of waterlogged carpet, couches and upended refrigerators from their homes Sunday as they began the cleanup from recent flooding that Gov. Ted Strickland called "devastating."
Strickland and Federal Emergency Management Agency officials surveyed damage in the heavily flooded northwest Ohio village of Ottawa, where he walked through the muddy streets.
"It's difficult to exaggerate or embellish upon what's happened here. It's absolutely devastating," Strickland said in a telephone interview.
The governor wants the federal government to declare a major disaster in the parts of north-central Ohio inundated by the past week's powerful storms and record floods that were blamed for at least 18 deaths in the Midwest.