Pulaski County officials continue to deal with rainfall, flooding, and stranded cars

PULASKI COUNTY, Ind. -- The rainfall total in Pulaski County is now 11 inches in just 36 hours.

"It was the heaviest rain I've ever been in in my life," said Pulaski County Sheriff Chris Schramm.

Sheriff Chris Schramm has been on the job for more than 40 years and doesn't see a lot of firsts anymore.

The sheriff and his staff gave their all during Tuesday's downpour, all while not having the benefit of their radios, which were unable to be used after the signal went down.

"You're talking about 8 officers going to multiple different cars, vehicles that were flooded out so we're talking 30 to 40 different vehicles that were stuck in different areas of the county in water, and you had trees across the road, I can't even count how many of those there were," said Schramm.

The county's emergency management team also experienced things they hadn't before, as the National Weather Service determined that a derecho happened Tuesday.

"It's kind of like a hurricane, being on the ocean coast but it's an inland hurricane per se, and I didn't see that until this morning on Facebook, when I was trying to add some things that people can look at, and I was like wow because we learned about it when we learn the things about the weather but we never experience that stuff. We've never experienced that here as far as I'm aware of," said Richel Fox, Pulaski County EMA director.

As we move into Wednesday, sheriff Schramm says he and his team are fully prepared for whatever may come the county's way.

"All the officers are on standby, dispatch is on standby, got all the radios fixed, we had emergency radio services here yesterday working for two hours to get them back online, you're always preparing for stuff, something always comes up, yesterday we were not prepared to have the radios go down," said Schramm.

After what he's experienced, sheriff Schramm is urging others to stay inside if at all possible.

"Especially if they hear the sirens going off, just stay home, get to a place of safety, don't be out driving in it, I made the mistake of leaving yesterday at 14 and 39, and I shouldn't have, I didn't expect the rain to be that heavy, so I was nervous when I hit that heavy rain," said Schramm.

Sheriff Schramm estimates that he and his 8 officers have responded to around 30 to 40 different stranded vehicles throughout the county.