Levees hold back cresting Mississippi River

By James B. Kelleher

CAHOKIA, Illinois (Reuters) - Walls and levees held back the cresting Mississippi River on Sunday as requests for government aid poured in from homeowners and businesses swamped by the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years.

Across from St. Louis, where the river remained near the crest reached on Friday, Cahokia Mayor Frank Bergman said his city of 17,000 had escaped disaster by a few feet meters.

"We got lucky," he said as he walked a 50-year-old network of levees and flood walls that withstood the river's rise. River water that seeped under the levees at a few spots had been cordoned off by walls of sandbags.

The deluge that swamped Iowa cities and farms two weeks ago has washed down the most important U.S. waterway, swallowing up towns and thousands of acres of prime crop land in the heart of the world's largest grain and food exporter.

Drier weather in the past week, and more than two dozen levee breaks as the Mississippi overtopped its banks, appeared to spare downstream cities a repeat of the devastation seen in the last major floods in 1993.

The storms and flooding have been blamed for 24 deaths and billions of dollars in damage since late May that will take months to clean up. More than 40,000 people have been displaced, most of them in Iowa.

Bridges and highways have been swamped, factories shut down, water and power utilities damaged, and the earnings of railroads, farmers and many other businesses disrupted.

Fears that as many as 5 million acres of corn and soybeans have been lost in the fertile U.S. corn belt pushed up corn and other food commodity prices to record highs and worsened market fears of spiraling world food prices.