Tara Hollis couldn’t see any floodwaters when she first peered out the window at 5 a.m. on the morning of March 14. Cars still were driving by on the road, Hollis said. Half an hour later, water from the Loup River, which runs along the south side of the city into the Platte River, had crept up to the house she shared with her son, her boyfriend and her brother in Columbus, Neb., a city of about 22,000 people west of Omaha. By 9:30 a.m., the 27-year-old and her family were trapped on the second floor of the rental house as the water reached up to four feet on the first floor and the power went out, she said.
