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The main way into Hardin, a village in western Illinois, is over the Joe Page Bridge. But the rising waters of the Illinois River flooded the bridge earlier this month, forcing it to close.

“Now the only other way out for the vil­lage’s 1,000-plus res­i­dents is to the north via tens of miles of wind­ing, poorly paved coun­try roads that are barely wide enough to al­low a ve­hi­cle go­ing in each di­rec­tion,” The Wall Street Journal’s Erin Ailworth wrote recently. “A 20-minute drive to a gro­cery store will now take a few hours — and it could be this way for months.”

Hardin is suffering from the floods of 2019. The Arkansas River, Missouri River and Mississippi River have also overflowed their banks recently, damaging homes, ruining harvests and disrupting life. A few parts of the Midwest that experts thought would flood only once every 500 years have been overrun this year. At least 30 different p laces in Iowa and Nebraska have seen record flooding. The small city of Kimmswick, Mo., had to cancel its annual Strawberry Festival, which usually draws 50,000 visitors and accounts for a major portion of the city’s budget, Ailworth explained.