Perilous
Times and Climate Change
Massive Mississippi floods force major evacuations
MEMPHIS, Tenn | Thu May 5, 2011 10:23pm EDT
(Reuters) - The rising Mississippi river lapped over downtown
Memphis streets on Thursday as a massive wall of water threatened
to unleash near record flooding all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
Water lapped over Riverside Drive and onto Beale Street in
Memphis, and threatened some homes on Mud Island, a community of
about 5,000 residents with a river theme park. The island connects
to downtown Memphis by a bridge and causeway.
Emergency officials in Millington near Memphis were "going
door-to-door, asking people to leave," according to the Tennessee
Emergency Management Agency.
Large amounts of rain and melt from the winter snow has caused a
chain reaction of flooding from Canada and the Dakotas through
Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee. It
is expected to soon hit Mississippi and Louisiana at the mouth of
the Mississippi River.
"The flood is rolling down, it is breaking records as it moves
down and it is one of those wait-and-see type of things as to how
massive it is going to be when it's all said and done," said
Charles Camillo, historian for the Mississippi River Commission
and the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project.
In Arkansas, westbound traffic on a section of one of the nation's
major trucking arteries, Interstate 40, was closed for a second
day due to flooding.
The White River was expected to crest at its highest ever level of
40 feet at Des Arc, Arkansas on Thursday night, breaking a 1949
record.
A levee overflowed near the White River, forcing a mandatory
evacuation of the town of Cotton Plant, the Arkansas Department of
Emergency Management said.
Officials at the Shelby County Office of Preparedness, that
includes Memphis, predicted that the flood could affect 2,832
properties if it crests at 48 feet this coming weekend.
A crest of 48 feet would be the river's highest level since 1937,
according to the National Weather Service. The service currently
puts the river level at Memphis at 45.21 feet, with an expected
rise to 47.6 feet by Monday morning.
The flooding is also affecting towns not directly on the
Mississippi. Residents in south Dyersburg, Tenn., about 20 miles
from the Mississippi, have been asked to evacuate because of the
projected crest of the North Fork of the Forked Deer River, which
runs into the big river.
North of Memphis upstream, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers blew
up a third section of a Missouri levee Thursday afternoon to let
flood waters back into the Mississippi.
The Corps blew up a two-mile section of the Birds Point levee
Monday night to help ease flooding in Illinois and Kentucky. The
levee destruction resulted in the flooding of 130,000 acres of
Missouri farmland. The Corps then blew up two smaller sections of
the levee Tuesday and Thursday to let water back in the river.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday declared parts of Kentucky,
Mississippi and Tennessee as disaster areas due to flooding.
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon Thursday requested that Obama make a
major disaster declaration for the state as a result of high
winds, tornadoes and flooding since April 19.
The levee system in Mississippi is holding for now but it has
never been tested like this before, officials said.
"Compared to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 this flood is
going to be a lot nastier," said Marty Pope, senior hydrologist
for the National Weather Service in Jackson, Miss.
The river is predicted to crest at 64.5 feet on May 17 in the
Vicksburg, Miss. area. Vicksburg has a flood stage of 48 feet,
which means the river will crest more than 16 feet above normal,
according to flood experts at the National Weather Service.
The flood waters will reach more than a foot above the Yazoo
Backwater Levee near Yazoo City, Miss. and this will flood
thousands of acres of farmland, said Pope.
There were major floods on the Mississippi in 1927, 1937, 1973,
1993 and 2008. The 1927 flood caused up to 1,000 deaths and left
600,000 homeless. Floodways were adopted as a response.
Camillo said it was too early to estimate expected damage from the
2011 flooding. He noted that much has changed since the 1927
flood, including the structure of the levees and the addition of
dozens of reservoirs throughout the Mississippi River basin and
floodways.
The Mississippi has four floodways: Birds Point and three
spillways in Louisiana.
"There is a very good possibility that we would operate three
floodways ... and we have never done that before," Camillo said.
(Additional reporting by David Bailey in Minneapolis, Tim Ghianni
in Nashville, Suzi Parker in Little Rock and Leigh Coleman in
Biloxi, Mississippi; Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Greg
McCune)