INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Weary southern Indiana residents tried to reclaim their water-logged homes Monday and Marines sandbagged a levee protecting yet another threatened town while officials waited to see whether a new wave of storms would add to already historic flooding.

Hours after President Bush declared nearly a third of Indiana's counties disaster areas, Gov. Mitch Daniels canceled a trade mission to Japan so he could oversee the state's effort to cope with the worst flooding in modern history.

Residents were starting the long recovery from flooding caused by up to 11 inches of rain on Saturday. Two people were killed and thousands displaced. And flash flooding was reported in Owen and Marion counties Monday as a fresh line of thunderstorms moved through.

State officials said they could not yet give a dollar estimate on the damage or the number of homes and businesses destroyed in Indiana. About 300 people remained in shelters, down from more than 1,200 Sunday night, said Joe Wainscott, executive director of the state Department of Homeland Security. He had no estimate on the number of people forced to abandon their homes.

Daniels said officials won't know until Tuesday morning whether the latest rain aggravated the problem. Dry weather for at least a day gave everyone a "chance to catch our breath," Daniels said.

"If pictures tell a thousand words, this takes more than a thousand," he said. "There's been some great, stunning photography, but I'm not sure any of it captures the extent of the damage, and nothing can capture, I don't think, the heartache that you only sense when you are able to sit with people who have been through it."

One of those victims, Terry Verble, 74, looked with despair at the water surrounding the Medora home he shares with his wife, Selma, 71. He lamented they had no flood insurance to cover the damages left behind by the water that inundated their basement in the community about 45 miles northwest of Louisville, Ky.

"Now I live in a lake. I got a mess the rest of the summer to clean up," Verble said. "I have no idea of where to turn next except to try and fix it ourselves."

By Monday morning, eight sites along rivers and streams in central and southern Indiana had eclipsed the flood levels set during the March 1913 deluge considered Indiana's greatest flood in modern times, said Scott Morlock, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Indiana.

The destruction led Bush to order federal aid to supplement state and local funds to 29 counties. Rushing water breached dams and washed out portions of highways, some of which remained closed.

Some 140 Marines from North Carolina in Indiana for training joined about 200 Indiana National Guard troops in helping local emergency agencies sandbag a levee of the White River at Elnora, about 100 miles southwest of Indianapolis. The river was forecast to crest Tuesday at nearby Newberry near 29 feet, or 16 feet above flood stage.

At one point, water rushed through the levee there at 750,000 gallons per second, Morlock said.

"Obviously some of the levees along the Wabash and East Fork of the White River are a very high concern for us," Wainscott said.

One of those levees was down the road from 29-year-old Deena Lamb's home. She watched from her house on a hill as her fields filled with water from the rushing White River that had spilled over its banks and the levee.

"I came out and you could hear it just raging. It was like the ocean," the stay-at-home mom said.

Amid the desperation emerged tales of drama and close calls. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter rescued six campers — including a toddler and two infants — who had been stranded in Owen-Putnam State Forest about 40 miles southwest of Indianapolis. The helicopter was unable to land, but its crew brought the trapped campers to safety in a rescue basket, said John Erickson, a spokesman for homeland security. It had taken crews all day Sunday to reach them.

"They were running out of food and water," Erickson said.

Not far away, on Mill Creek in Morgan County, state conservation officers on Monday recovered the body of Mark Stroud, 44, of Coatesville, a boater who had been missing since Saturday, said Phil Bloom, a spokesman for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. Stroud was the second person to die in the flooding.

In Franklin, one of the first communities hard-hit by flooding, 26 police cars floated away in high waters. Cleanup was an ordeal for the 20,000 residents in the town about 25 miles southeast of Indianapolis.

"We saw cars lifted, turned and then bumping into each other like bumper cars," said Police Chief Stan Lynn. "I've been in law enforcement for 21 years and this department for 18, and I've never seen anything like it."

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Associated Press video journalist Mark Carlson in Medora and writers Rick Callahan and Mike Smith in Indianapolis, Ryan Lenz in Edwardsport and Michael Marot in Franklin contributed to this report.