Hip-high floodwaters separated John Finlay's home from the main road Sunday afternoon. His pianos had been sent to storage, and the furniture was on the second floor. The swollen Myakka River swirled inches from his door. It will reach its crest about noon today. All he could do was wait. "It will get in there," said Finlay, who runs the Snook Haven restaurant at the river's edge. "There's probably going to be 2 feet in the restaurant. But I'm gonna stay through it all. I'm gonna stay here to throw the looters out." A tropical depression dropped almost 20 inches of rain in southern Sarasota County last week _ not enough by itself to flood an undetermined number of homes and chase roughly 1,500 families to higher ground. The problems, emergency workers said, were caused by water from upstream draining into the Myakka and Peace rivers, flooding the small connecting canals that slice through North Port, Englewood, and small portions of Sarasota. "North Port is pretty bad right now," Bob Hall of the Sarasota County Office of Emergency Management said Sunday night. Hall said the Myakka River would crest at 12 to 13 feet. Sunday night, the Peace River had reached over 12 feet near State Road 70, close to Arcadia in DeSoto County. It was expected to crest in Arcadia Tuesday at about 14 feet, 3 feet above flood stage. Flood warnings remained in place Sunday for the Peace River and Horse Creek in DeSoto County and the Little Manatee River in Manatee County. Warnings for other Central Florida counties, including Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough, were canceled. At Lake Manatee in Manatee County on Saturday, the flood gates were opened to allow about 22,000 gallons of water a second to gush south. Downstream, the water began to rise, first closing sections of tiny Myakka City on Friday and flooding seven homes with more than 4 feet of foul red-stained water. The creeks in North Port, about 40 miles to the south, began to overflow into the streets Friday night. Norm Harris ignored the lightly flooded streets when he returned home from work at 6 p.m. After all, it had stopped raining. At 3 a.m., he got out of bed and discovered the wet carpet. He emptied the bottoms of his closets and stored valuables on top shelves. By 5 a.m., the water was up to his ankles. Only a light drizzle fell outside. He waited for the waters to subside. By mid-morning, the water was still rising. He put his wife's 1992 sports car up on blocks, left his seven cocker spaniels to fend for themselves in the open bed of a pickup and fled in a Fire Department airboat. He tried to rescue four of the dogs Sunday, but the one road leading to his home was blocked by water. His buddy's Ford truck stalled at Libby Road, a street that had become an island. And Harris, finally overcome by two sleepless days and a fear of what he could not change, walked to the side of the road and cried silently. "It's starting to hit me. Hopefully," he said, "hopefully they'll be okay."