TIPTONVILLE, Tenn. — As Memphis readied for the mighty Mississippi River to bring its furor to town, some Kentucky residents upstream returned to their homes Saturday, optimistic the levees would hold and they had seen the worst of the flooding.
In the small town of Hickman, Ky., officials and volunteers spent nearly two weeks piling sandbags on top of each other to shore up the 17-mile levee, preparing for a disaster of historic proportion. About 75 residents were told to flee town and waited anxiously for days to see how bad the flooding would be.
By Saturday, the levee had held, and officials boasted that only a few houses appeared to be damaged. More important, no one was injured or killed.
“We have held back the Mississippi River, and that’s a feat,” said Fulton County’s emergency management director, Hugh Caldwell. “We didn’t beat it, but it didn’t beat us. We’ll call it a draw.”
Downstream, though, there was danger in places such as Memphis, the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana. In Arkansas, authorities recovered the body of a man who drove around barricades earlier in the week and was swept away by floodwaters when he tried to walk out.
Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. warned residents in low-lying areas to evacuate, and nearby, Shelby Mayor Mark Luttrell said the community was “facing what could be a large-scale disaster.”
William Owen, 53, didn’t heed the call until firefighters began to bang on his door Saturday morning at a Memphis mobile home park. Owen said when he went to sleep, the water wasn’t that high. By midday, it had risen about a foot and was around the base of his home.
He grabbed his medication, and he and his girlfriend took a city bus to a shelter. He was told he might have to stay for two weeks.
“It seems like we’ve had a stroke of bad luck,” Owen said. “I’m hoping things will get better. I just don’t know what else to do right now.”
Record river levels, some dating as far back as the 1920s, were expected to be broken in some areas. In Memphis, the river was expected to crest at 48 feet by Tuesday, just shy of the 48.7-foot record from the devastating flood of 1937.
Some Memphis residents saw rain Saturday. There was good news, though: The forecast was dry until Thursday.
About 100 miles to the north, residents in Tiptonville, Tenn., were hopeful as the river levels started to fall.
Janice Spence, 60, was working the cash register at the Health Mart pharmacy downtown, just a couple of blocks from her home. She was satisfied with the preparations officials have made but still has her grandson’s boat parked beside her house and has packed clothes and toiletries in case she needs to leave.
Elsewhere, officials in Louisiana warned residents that even if a key spillway northwest of Baton Rouge was opened, residents could expect water 5 to 25 feet deep over seven parishes.
Some of Louisiana’s most valuable farmland is expected to be inundated.
Many in harm’s way
More than 4 million people live in 63 counties and parishes adjacent to the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers from Cairo, Ill., south to the Gulf of Mexico, down slightly from 2000, according to a census analysis by The Associated Press. It’s about twice as many people who lived in the region before the 1927 and 1937 floods.
