May 10

Missouri River continues to rise

BIG LAKE, Mo. (AP) — Crews continued to dump rock today along the side of flooded railroad tracks as they sought to restore access to an area that was inundated after nine levees broke.

Floodwater continued to rise across northwest and central Missouri today, drowning small towns like Big Lake and shutting down businesses from Chillicothe to Platte County.

The village of Big Lake, which sits in the middle of the waterways, was flooded Monday night and Tuesday after five levees on the Missouri River and four smaller levees along the Tarkio River and the Tarkio Creek were breeched.

Matt Anderson, a volunteer firefighter at Big Lake, helped with the evacuation and recalled watching the rush of water hit the community early Tuesday morning and carry off large trees and even docks with the boats still attached.

“It just all of the sudden starting rolling in,” Anderson said. “I don’t know how fast it was coming, but it was coming too fast to stay around.”

But even as floodwater crested at lower-than-predicted levels in many spots along Missouri rivers and streams, nervous residents moved items out of their houses and filled sandbags today.

any had lived through the 1993 floods, one of the most costly in U.S. history.

“It just makes you nervous when you’ve been through that,” said Saline County Sheriff Wally George, who watched floodwaters from 1993 mangle a stretch of railroad tracks. I’ll never forget that sight. A set of straight railroad tracks it made into a U. I’m amazed water can do that.”

Rooftops were all that were showing of some of the 450 to 475 homes that were flooded in Big Lake, said Charlie Triggs, chief of town’s volunteer fire department.

The Missouri Water Patrol has rescued about 20 people from a campsite and flooded homes in Big Lake. The patrol also helped reunite a few animal owners with their pets, including Glenn Burger, who had the patrol return him to his home Wednesday to rescue his two pet cockatiels.

“I’ve had them about five years and I hated to lose them,” said Burger, 78, who lived through floods in 1984 and 1993. “This is the last one. I’m through. I’m going to move to town.”

State officials said dozens of levees have been overtopped or breached since the drenching weekend thunderstorms that also generated tornadoes that claimed 12 lives in Kansas. Most of the levees shield agricultural land, but at least nine major, nonfederal levees that protect towns had been overtopped, said Susie Stonner, a spokeswoman for the State Emergency Management Agency.

No injuries or deaths had been reported from the Missouri floods, Stonner said.

In Bigelow, Bill Hayworth watched Wednesday as floodwaters rose around his home and the homes of his daughter and other relatives.

The 77-year-old lost his home in the nearby community of Big Lake in 1993 when a record-setting flood completely covered his house. He had flood insurance then, but bought no such insurance for his current home because Bigelow had no history of flooding.

“I am hoping FEMA will help us,” he said, staring at the water that covered rows of planted tomatoes and sweet corn that he sells at flea markets. “I don’t know what God had in mind for us on this — ‘93 and then this one. Maybe it’s time to get on a mountaintop.”

The National Weather Service said it expected parts of the Missouri, Platte and Grand rivers, along with their tributaries, to remain at flood stage until the weekend, adding misery for property owners and spurring downstream residents to fill sandbags and move what they could to safety.

“We’re trying to ensure communities are thinking about the water that’s probably coming,” said Gov. Matt Blunt, who has mobilized more than 100 members of the National Guard.

The biggest problems are on the Platte and Grand rivers, where floodwaters were still rising to near-historic levels, causing some road closures.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets any better,” said Julie Adolphson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pleasant Hill.

The good news, she said, is there is no significant rain forecast for the region over the next few days, giving swollen creeks and streams time to return closer to normal.

In Platte County, about 49 businesses had been evacuated in the cities of Parkville, Riverside and Tracey.

To the east, floodwaters from the Grand and Thompson rivers had flooded a few businesses and homes Wednesday in the southwest part of Chillicothe, Livingston County Sheriff Steve Cox said.

The Chillicothe school district’s administrative office, which houses an alternative school, closed Wednesday because of flooding, but all other schools were open. School officials used a boat to reach the district office.

In neighboring Carroll County, presiding commissioner Nelson Heil said he was most concerned about the loss of some of the county’s most productive farmland.

“We’ll be lucky if it stops at 20,000 acres,” said Heil, who said he has lost around 200 acres of corn and wheat. “It’s really going to be rough on everybody. I know there are some people who are not going to survive this.”

In Jefferson City, the National Weather Service forecast the river would crest Sunday at 8.7 feet above flood stage, lower than previously expected but still high enough to cause flooding at the municipal airport and other low-lying areas below the bluff where the state Capitol sits.