Employees were evacuated by boat from a flooded building at the University of Louisville on Tuesday after heavy rain pounded the region, submerging cars up to their rooftops and lagooning buildings in several feet of water on two of the university's campuses.
Rescue units from local police and fire departments used orange inflatable rafts equipped with small engines to pick up 30 stranded employees at the Houchens building, on the university's main Belknap campus.
The responders first picked up a pregnant woman and people with medical conditions, then returned several times to bring the remaining employees to dry ground, where carpools were arranged. Many could not get to their own vehicles, which were trapped under water.
"They couldn't go anywhere. They couldn't get out of the building," a university spokesman, Mark R. Hebert, said. "There's never been anything like this in the city of Louisville."
Aside from one broken wrist and some sprained ankles, there were no serious injuries, he added.
Several buildings on the Belknap and Health Sciences campuses were without electricity and had flooding of up to two feet. The university has not yet determined what the damage will cost, Mr. Hebert said, but employees are already beginning to clean up the campuses.
The Belknap campus and the School of Public Health and Information Sciences on the Health Sciences campus will be closed on Wednesday. The Shelby campus and the remainder of the Health Sciences campus will remain open.
At least two other institutions of higher education in Louisville, Bellarmine and Spalding Universities, were also closed on Tuesday because of flooding, according to announcements on their Web sites.
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