WYATT, Mo. — The dramatic, late-night demolition of a huge earthen levee sent chocolate-colored floodwaters pouring onto thousands of acres of Missouri farmland Tuesday, easing the threat to a tiny Illinois town being menaced by the Mississippi River.
But the blast near Cairo, Ill., did nothing to ease the risk of more trouble downstream, where the mighty river is expected to rise to its highest levels since the 1920s in some parts of Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana.
“We’re making a lot of unfortunate history here in Mississippi in April and May,” said Jeff Rent, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency. “We had the historic tornadoes, and now this could be a historic event.”
The Army Corps of Engineers was considering making similar use of other “floodways” — enormous basins surrounded by giant levees that can be opened to divert floodwaters.
A staccato series of explosions lit up the night sky Monday over the Mississippi with orange flashes and opened a massive hole in the Birds Point levee. A wall of water up to 15 feet high swiftly filled corn, soybean and wheat fields in southeast Missouri.
Upstream at Cairo, which sits precariously at the confluence of the swollen Mississippi and Ohio rivers, preliminary readings suggested the explosion worked.
But across the river, clearing skies gave a heartbreaking view of the inundation triggered by the demolition. The torrent swamped an estimated 200 square miles, washing away crop prospects for this year and damaging or destroying as many as 100 homes.
A group of 25 farmers sued the federal government Tuesday, arguing that their land had been taken without adequate compensation.
At a spot along the Birds Point levee, 56-year-old Ray Presson looked through binoculars to see just how high the water stood at his 101-year-old home and the 2,400 acres he farms around it. Presson is staying with a cousin in nearby Charleston, and he’s not sure when, or if, he’ll get to go home.
“It could be three weeks. It could be two months,” he said. “The government’s not giving us any kind of timetable.”
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said farmers who had crop insurance will be eligible for government reimbursements if their land was flooded.
Other forms of help will be available for livestock producers and tree farmers under the same programs designed for natural disasters. Those who lost homes also may be eligible for rural housing loans.
If Cairo and other spots were dodging disaster, ominous flooding forecasts were raising alarm from southeast Missouri to Louisiana and Mississippi.
In Missouri, the town of Caruthersville was bracing for a crest of 49.7 feet later this week. The flood wall protecting the town can hold back up to 50 feet, but a sustained crest will pressure the wall. Workers have been fortifying the concrete and earthen barrier with thousands of sandbags.
Memphis could see a near-record crest of 48 feet on May 10, just inches lower than the record of 48.7 feet in 1937. Farther south, the lower Mississippi River was expected to crest well above flood stages in a region still dealing with the aftermath of last week’s deadly tornadoes.
