LAKE DELTON, Wis. -- When Lake Delton in Sauk County overflowed on Monday, washing out a large swath of County Highway A and wiping out about five homes located on the shoreline while it cut a path into the Wisconsin River, one Wisconsin Dells resident was able to get a bird's eye view of the damage as it was happening.

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Phil White took powerful pictures and video of the erosion and flooding as it happened Monday.

"You're watching this and you're thinking, 'I can't believe I'm seeing this.' I mean, this is a natural disaster of epic proportions here," White said.

Camera in hand, White watched a road he has traveled all his life erode Monday morning.

"You only see (this) on TV, on the news, and it's happening right in my back yard," White said.

But White said the last thing he expected to see when he started shooting were entire houses getting washed away in the flood.

"It was scary watching once it really started letting loose, taking the houses. It was scary. You felt really bad for the people that were involved," he said. "The power and the speed of the erosion was just phenomenal -- 20 minutes, half an hour, and a lot of things were already gone in that time," White said.

White said at one point, he was worried about the cliff he was standing on to view the devastation.

"At one point, the water had channeled itself coming straight across the river to the sandstone cliffs we were standing on, and we looked down and the water was boiling up underneath us," White said.

White said the footage shows how unstoppable the flooding and erosion was. But some crews tried, using a bulldozer to dump rock against the foundations of homes that were eventually washed away.