Midwest US floods continue as region braces for more rain*

By Christopher Leonard, Associated Press Writer

FOLEY, Mo. — For the second time in 15 years, Keith Aubuchon found
himself packing his belongings and evacuating his home to escape a
"100-year" flood of the Mississippi River. He returned and remodeled his
house after the flood of 1993. This time, he doesn't know if it will be
worth coming back.

"This is my second flood. I don't think there will be a third," Aubuchon
said as he drove a pickup loaded with a washing machine and other
belongings out of his subdivision. Floodwaters rapidly filled the roads,
yards and gullies behind him just hours after a levee breached north of
Foley. Authorities estimate much of the small town will be flooded by
the weekend.

The weather might not help, with forecasters predicting showers and
scattered thunderstorms in Missouri and Iowa both Friday and Saturday
before the precipitation moves out Sunday.

Three Mississippi River levees broke Thursday in Lincoln County, sending
a creeping wave of water toward Foley and causing more concern in nearby
Winfield.

The river was overflowing 90% of the levees in eastern Lincoln County,
and at least four more breaches were expected to aggravate the flooding
overnight, said Lincoln County Emergency Management spokesman Andy Binder.

While the situation worsened in Lincoln County, it improved slightly
elsewhere along the river after the National Weather Service
significantly lowered crest predictions. The revisions came after
several levee breaks in Illinois, including one on Wednesday near Meyer
that potentially could inundate 17,000 acres of farmland with water that
otherwise would have been flowing south.

That means many towns along the river won't see the record-level flood
crests they expected. The new prediction shows St. Louis cresting at
37.3 feet on Friday, well short of the 49.58-foot mark in 1993.

But National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Kramper said river towns
aren't safe yet.

"There will still be a lot of places with major flooding," Kramper said.
"Even at the levels we're expecting now, a lot of places are threatened."

The relief for some river towns came at a cost for communities where
levees failed. The first levee breached in Lincoln County on Wednesday
near Winfield, about 50 miles north of St. Louis, followed Thursday by
the series of breaks that spilled water into sparsely populated areas,
Binder said.

The southward flows were expected to put increasing pressure on a series
of inland levees protecting the towns of Winfield and Elsberry. To help
raise the levees an additional 2 feet, dozens of volunteers filled tens
of thousands of sandbags in Winfield. The bags were piled onto pallets
and shipped to the levees where roughly 150 National Guard members
stacked them on top of the existing walls.

"It's about the most rewarding thing I've done in a long time," said
David Hays, a computer programmer from Chesterfield, Mo., who took time
off work to help fill sandbags. "I was filling sandbags until I couldn't
move my arms. Then I held bags until my shoulders hurt. Then I became a
supervisor."

In Iowa, where residents are mopping up after the deluge in Des Moines
and Iowa City, President Bush surveyed the flood's aftermath on Thursday
and assured residents and rescuers alike that he is listening to their
concerns.

"Obviously, to the extent we can help immediately, we will help," said
Bush, still mindful of criticism that the government reacted slowly to
Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

"You'll come back better," the president said. "Sometimes it's hard to
see it."

Bush was in Europe when tornadoes hit and heavy rains sent rivers
surging over their banks, killing at least 24 people, the majority in
Iowa. He made a point to try to show his concern while overseas and
traveled to Iowa just two days after returning.

"I really don't have much of an opinion of his coming," said Lashawn
Baker, 33, whose family was just starting to clean her flooded home in a
southwest Cedar Rapids neighborhood. "It took him a long time to get to
New Orleans and he didn't help any of those people, so I don't think
he's going to do anything to help Cedar Rapids now that he's here."

At the briefing in Cedar Rapids, Bush, his shirt sleeves rolled up, told
local officials that he came "just to listen to what you've got on your
mind."

Noting that several hundred federal emergency workers were fanning
across Iowa, he added: "That ought to help the people in the smaller
communities know that somebody is there to listen to them."

The sluggish federal response when Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in
2005 was judged woefully inadequate and brought heavy criticism of Bush
and FEMA. It also brought sensitivity on the part of federal officials
each time disaster has struck since to show that things were working better.

FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison accompanied Bush to Iowa on Air
Force One and praised the "great coordination" between federal, state
and local leaders.

Paulison said one thing FEMA was doing differently was working better
with other partners — the Army Corps of Engineers and even Wal-Mart — to
distribute supplies. The agency also was placing stocks of sandbags and
other supplies in states or towns where flooding hadn't hit yet or
material had not been requested, just to be ready, he said.

Contributing: Associated Press writers Cheryl Wittenauer, Betsy Taylor
and Jim Salter in St. Louis, Henry C. Jackson in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and
Natasha Metzler in Washington contributed to this report.