With each block that Washington Gov. Jay Inslee walked, the damage from flooding in Hamburg became more vivid.

Some 1,100 western Iowans live in the town, established in the mid-1800s between the Nishnabotna River and the Missouri River. On Friday, the town stood mostly clear of residents.

Those who were in town relied on bottled water since tap water was deemed unsafe. Port-a-potties lined residential neighborhoods for people who couldn't flush their toilets.

Construction workers ripped up carpeting in a drug store where empty pill bottles and papers littered the floor. Outside, Inslee stepped on the grass — the ground beneath deeply saturated — and his feet sunk into the mud.

Inslee was prepared to diagnose the problem: Climate change, his titular campaign issue as a 2020 presidential candidate, intensified the flooding from the Missouri River.

Several other Democratic presidential candidates have also blamed climate change for the flood damage in western Iowa and Nebraska. But for some of the actual residents who were affected by the flooding, climate change was the farthest thing from their minds.

“I think they’re totally stupid, myself. That’s ridiculous,” said Ron Perry, a local Hamburg resident who met Inslee on Friday at his car shop, Risky Business. “What they need to do is load the senators and congresspeople and put them in helicopters and bring them over and let them look what we really are.”

Hamburg, a new caucus stop

A gaggle of reporters and national correspondents joined Inslee's tour of Hamburg to see the flood damage.

Local climate analyst John Davis, 70, led the tour.

Davis' family has lived in Hamburg for four generations, he said, and this was the first flooding to cause damage at his home, built in 1938. He plans to move to Council Bluffs this summer.

Davis contends climate change caused the extreme flooding in Hamburg.

Warming air and water in the Arctic is contributing to extreme weather conditions felt in North America, like the late arriving but bitterly cold winter Iowans experienced this year from the polar vortex.

Once the snow rapidly melted, along with heavy spring rains, flooding in March hit Hamburg hard.

“Nothing could have stopped this,” Davis said.

And it’s only going to get worse, he said: Heavy rain events and droughts are expected to increase as air temperature continues to warm and create unstable weather events because of climate change.

Walking down Main Street, Davis led Inslee to pavement that's still underwater.

“Welcome to the Missouri River,” Davis said.

His friends and neighbors don’t believe that climate change is what caused their homes to flood. “People here are in shock, and they’re still going to be in shock,” Davis said. “They’re still in climate denial because it’s too big of a problem to fathom.”

Janelle Spiegel, 63, volunteers at the assistance center in Hamburg where a gymnasium is stacked with donated clothing, children’s toys and other goods from all over the country to help residents recover.

“I still can’t believe it. Every morning when I drive into town it’s like an alternate universe,” Spiegel said.

She said climate change may have contributed to some flooding, but blamed the extent of the damage on the Army Corps of Engineers.

Many Iowa farmers along the Missouri River agree on that.

Several western Iowa farmers are part of a lawsuit that claims flood control is no longer the Corps' top priority. Instead, they say, the agency is focused on slowing the river and restoring habitat that protects the endangered pallid sturgeon and shorebirds like the piping plover and interior least tern.

A federal judge last year mostly agreed with the nearly 400 Missouri River farmers, landowners and businesses, finding that the Corps' changes since 2004 have caused or contributed to some of the worst flooding in the river's history.

Spiegel said right now the town just needs money for flood cleanup, but no one is sure how to get the resources they need. In her application for presidential disaster declarations, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said flooding caused $1.6 billion in damages.

“We just feel they’ve mismanaged things,” Spiegel said of the Corps.

► Iowa Poll: Iowa's registered Republicans are not worried about climate change threats

Perry, who owns the car shop Inslee visited, said if the Corps had released a little bit of water instead of a high volume, Hamburg residents wouldn’t be in this mess.

“I blame it totally on the Corps of Engineers, and so does everyone else around here,” he said.

Inslee said the Trump administration has rejected climate change, so the Corps is unable to study the effects of changing weather conditions on bodies of water to prevent flooding from happening.

“He’s told these agencies to ignore clear science,” Inslee said.

About 68 percent of Freemont County, where Hamburg is located, voted for Trump in 2016.

In addition, a recent Iowa Poll found the majority of Republican voters are not worried about climate change.

In Hamburg, Inslee finds younger voters are more receptive to his message. He said people like Davis will be needed to educate their neighbors.

“This should not be an argument,” Inslee said. “We should be working on this together.”