MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Tourists gathered along Beale Street and gawkers snapped photos of the rising Mississippi River as more residents were told Sunday to flee their homes, and the river’s crest edged toward the city.
Officials went door-to-door, warning about 240 people to get out before the river reaches its expected peak Tuesday. In all, residents in more than 1,300 homes have been told to go, and about 370 people were staying in shelters.
The Mississippi spared Kentucky and northwest Tennessee any catastrophic flooding, and no deaths have been reported there, but some low-lying towns and farmland along the banks of the big river have been inundated with water. And there’s tension farther south in the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana, with the river’s crest continuing a lazy pace, leaving behind what could be a slow-developing disaster.
Shirley Woods, who lives in south Memphis, wakes up each day and decides whether to leave. She was barbecuing ribs, chicken, pork chops and hot dogs with relatives on Mother’s Day despite the fact that floodwaters are just feet from her house.
“My sister called this morning and asked about the flood,” Woods said. “I’ll give it another day, and if it comes up much higher, we’re getting out of here.”
Jittery residents have been abandoning low-lying homes for days as the dangerously surging river threatened to crest at 48 feet, just shy of a 48.7-foot record of a devastating 1937 flood.
Record river levels, some dating as far back as the 1920s, have been broken in some areas upstream.
Heavy rains and snowmelt have been blamed for swelling the big river, and there’s so much water in the Mississippi, the tributaries that feed into it also are backed up, creating some of the worst flood problems so far.
