FINDLAY, Ohio — Heather Carroccio stuffed a few essentials into a backpack and grabbed her 4-year-old son’s Elmo book and a Slinky after firefighters motored up to her porch in a boat.

She and her husband had wanted to ride out the floodwaters enveloping the neighborhood even after waking up yesterday and finding their cars nearly submerged. But “the kind rescuers persuaded us,” she said.

There was a lot of that going on yesterday — families stunned by the worst flooding in this northern Ohio town since 1913, but hesitant to evacuate.

“A lot of people won’t leave,” said Lieutenant Brian Herbert, a firefighter from Fostoria. “Some we don’t give a choice.”

Authorities said at least 500 people were evacuated, but that figure was probably low because many left on their own or were helped by residents using their own boats.

Three men in a fishing boat ferried a mother and her 2-week-old daughter along with the family dogs.

“That was the catch of the day,” said Angel Sanchez, the baby’s neighbor.

The little girl didn’t make a peep, said Gene Lynn, one of the volunteer rescuers, but “the dogs were a little nervous,” he said.

Some residents sat on their porches watching the canoes and kayaks paddle past. One man standing on his roof dangled a fishing line in the murky brown water below.

Three days of heavy rain left the region waterlogged. Schools were closed and some neighborhoods and farms were cut off to outside traffic because so many roads and streets were under water.

No one was reported injured or killed in Ohio, but at least 22 people have died in two American storm systems — one that has spanned the Upper Midwest and another from remnants of Tropical Storm Erin in Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

Flooding also continued in northern Iowa as thunderstorms dumped more heavy rain across the region yesterday. Three subdivisions along the Des Moines River near Fort Dodge were evacuated, and crews used rocks and sandbags to shore up a levee that had begun to give way, officials said.

Thousands of homes were damaged in Wisconsin and Minnesota as the storm swept through. A preliminary survey by the American Red Cross in Minnesota identified about 4,200 affected homes, including 256 complete losses, 338 with major damage and 475 that are still inaccessible, said Kris Eide, the state’s director of homeland security and emergency management.

Preliminary damage reports in Wisconsin indicate 30 homes and 25 businesses were destroyed. Another 731 homes and 32 businesses were damaged.