Midwest flood towns take no chances as crest nears

By Nick Carey

HANNIBAL, Missouri (Reuters) - Lower flood crests brought welcome news to towns on Mississippi River on Thursday, but officials and workers on the front lines said the next few days will still be crucial as they fight to keep levees whole.

"You always have to be ready for the Mississippi to raise its ugly head," said John Hark, emergency management director for the city of Hannibal and Marion County, Missouri.

"It's a beautiful river, but it can turn very vicious and ugly in a hurry," he added. "Until that river goes back within its banks where it belongs, I'll take no chances."

Hannibal, boyhood home of author Mark Twain, is protected by an earth levee and flood wall, and it is not considered at risk. Shops in the picturesque downtown with its red brick and wood houses are open. The Twainland Express still takes tourists around town on a guided tour.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said on Thursday that the river at Hannibal was at 28.4 feet and was expected to crest at 29.4 feet on Sunday. Flood stage is 16 feet. The record high was 31.80 feet during the last big flood in 1993.

Flood levels in the area were down one to two feet on Thursday as levee breaches upstream siphoned water away from the river.

Hark said his concerns were focused not so much on Hannibal but on the two levee districts that he oversees, where work continues on "shoring them up to improve our defenses."

Elsewhere along this stretch of the Mississippi that is seeing the overflows of last week's torrential rains in Iowa and further north, an army of volunteer workers was checking levees as the crest approaches.

"At this point all our levees are stable, but we're nearing our crest point," said Kathy Dougherty of the Hancock County Emergency Services and Disaster Agency in Illinois. "We're entering a crucial 24-hour wait-and-see period. We have a lot of people in place and a big pile of sandbags in reserve."

SLOW TRAINS

Hancock County asked U.S. railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp to slow trains passing levees in the area so as not to weaken them, Dougherty said. The railroad had quickly complied, she added.

Preserving the levees will be one of the biggest challenges in the days ahead, even if the water does not come over the top, as the flood waters will seek a way through or even underneath these defenses, officials said.

At particular risk are sand levees pushed into place by bulldozers in the past week to ward off the flood, such as the 54-mile SNY levee system south of Quincy, Illinois.

Workers there toiled to stem the flow of water finding its way through the levee, adding sand more to prevent erosion.

"If things go bad, they will go bad fast," said Russ Koeller, a commissioner on the SNY levee system, while checking the levee near East Hannibal, Illinois. "We have to keep watch around the clock to keep the river out."