I live in northwest Indiana. I grew up in Calumet City Illinois. This is all on the south end of Lake Michigan. A million years ago, or so, it used to be the old shores of the lake. Various landmarks still stand on route 6 and route 30, both supposedly go coast to coast. This area has been and always will be a flood zone, sometimes the lake seemingly wants its property back! There is no way in hell you can figure mother nature, none. They engineer the roads higher, dig out and reroute water ways, and dump untold amounts of money in the deep tunnel project, dumping into the worlds largest lime quarry in Thronton Illinois, I-80,294 goes over the middle of it. Not to mention, all the cute little sub divisions that pop up out of the corn and soybean fields, the engineers dig storm water relief ponds in every one of them, and put play ground equpment in them, dual purpose areas. Well it was not enough, again! Record rain fall over the weekend sure put a dampner on my daughters 18th and my 49th birthday bash. We had a 1st annual pit bike race scheduled in my yard. The deluge killed our 2 entries in practice, no quads to send out first. During the week I generally take care of plumbing responsibilities. Rehabbing and bringing houses in Hammond Indiana up to modern plumbing codes. All their houses with basements and any plumbing openings are illegal by today's codes. Most all the houses are 60 years and older, some near 100! They were originally piped with galvanized pipe for water and drainage. It was estimated at a 20 to 25 year life, then it can fail. When it rains heavily they have to put a standpipe in the floor drain to prevent their basements from flooding. They do not want to hear their lovely basement is illegal. I can put backwater prevention in their floor drains, but the threads are rusted out of the floor drains. The sewage bursting out of the toilet, it can be stopped by a whole house check valve installed in the main sewer before any openings. These are the cheap band aid fixes. They need to be converted to overhead plumbing, and all their basement openings get rerouted to an ejector pit and pumped into the sewer. That is expensive! Now comes this weekends record rainfall, and record flooding. Plumbing friends went out on emergency calls, at 400 dollars and more an hour trying to help delusional home owners houses from flooding. Till they ran out of pumps, or it started coming into window openings. You can not fight mother nature. You can not out smart her either. But, the engineers will try