SHELBY | A flood surge of water and sandbagging activity moved south Tuesday through communities along the swollen Kankakee River.

The National Weather Service reported a record depth of water passed by the unincorporated community of Shelby early Tuesday and rolled west.

A section of the earthen dam protecting Sumava Resorts, a small Newton County community on the southern bank of the river, was eroded and gave way Tuesday morning as floodwater forced its way backward into a discharge pipe embedded in the dam, river officials said.

Volunteers piled sandbags around the broken levee.

Jody Melton, director of the Kankakee River Basin Commission, who visited the Shady Shores subdivision in Shelby Tuesday afternoon, said he hoped the worst was over.

"They've got it controlled now at Sumava," he said.

Melton and Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub, D-Schererville, were monitoring the river following calls for help from residents in advance of the rising waters.

"It hit the record, 13 feet, this morning," Melton said of the river's depth at Shelby. "We're riding it out."

About 50 Lowell High School students and adult volunteers loaded thousands of sandbags no longer needed to protect the Lowell downtown and transported the bags to newly flooded areas in the town of Schneider, the Wildwood subdivision to its south and Sumava Resorts.

"There was a lot of sandbagging at Marti's this morning," Melton said, referring to Marti's Landing, a popular restaurant on the river in Jasper County.