This morning, Gov. Nixon was in southeast Missouri to inspect conditions there and meet with elected officials and emergency managers and response leaders in Cape Girardeau. Missouri American Water spokeswoman Ann Dettmer said the water in homes and businesses still is safe to use.
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“I thank the many Missourians who are assisting their neighbors by providing rooms in their homes, helping with sandbagging efforts and countless other acts of kindness”.
“If it floods, they’ll pop back up and get going again”.
Still, this flood could be different.
Alton Mayor Brant Walker said he’s “very optimistic that what we’ve built here will hold” as the Mississippi River is expected to crest at 38 feet on Thursday, 17 feet above flood stage. “We just have to wait and hope and pray it doesn’t get in the house”. The small levee in Ste.
The state of emergency authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate disaster relief in over half of the state’s 114 counties and the city of St. Louis. The river isn’t expected to crest until Thursday. Neighbors and volunteers were placing sandbags around endangered homes.
Ste. Genevieve, a historic French village dating to the 18th century, remained dry thanks to a Mississippi River levee that was being constantly monitored, said Sandra Cabot, the town’s director of tourism. Ty Burch, from left, 6, mother Casey, brother Brody, 4, and father Keith, behind Brody, look out over the swollen Mississippi River floodwater rushing by Cape Girardeau, Mo., Saturday, Jan. 2, 2016. Surging Midwestern rivers forced hundreds of evacuations, threatened dozens of levees and brought transportation by vehicle, boat o…
Communities along the Mississippi River in southern IL and southern Missouri are expected to see the river rise to record levels into early next week.
News reported a total of 11 levees failed after ten inches of rain pounded the state over a three day period. The death toll rose Sunday when the body of a second teenager missing for several days was found near Kincaid, a town of about 1,400 residents along the South Fork Sangamon River near Springfield.
The flooding topped the 1993 flood record in some places, which has challenged flood control efforts.
While the water levels fell throughout Missouri and Illinois, NWS fears that the southern U.S. states could be next in line. Peck said he has no flood insurance but damage from a sewer backup may be covered.
“We’re so close”, he said.
The only north-south alternative to I-55 was an already-congested local road.
Other plants are treating the river water, she said.
“Everybody is at battle stations”, Bob Anderson, a spokesman for the Mississippi River Commission in Vicksburg, Miss., told The Christian Science Monitor on Thursday.
Passenger and freight trains were also disrupted. It had bombarded communities in the far southwestern reaches of the St. Louis suburbs during the week. Meanwhile, Union Pacific took two sections of track in Missouri and two in IL out of service due to rising waters. Fifteen have died in Missouri.
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But the shopping district along the lake was still open, Fire Chief Ted Martin said, adding, “it has been packed with people, and I don’t know where all of them have come from”. The Weather Service urged people to follow evacuation orders, saying levee failures could lead to “sudden and potentially deadly flooding”. Valley Park officials had ordered residents of almost 400 homes evacuated. The MR&T is a complex series of backwaters, levees, spillways, floodways, fuse plugs, and control structures, like the one at Old River Control Complex, which have been known to tremble as they try to keep the river in its designated place.
