River runs through it: U.S. flood crisis worsens along the Mississippi

May 6, 2011 – MEMPHIS – 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. –Reuters