Rains Pound Inundated Des Moines : Disaster: Relentless storms compound trouble at water plant and raise fears of disease. Flooding Midwest rivers swallow more farmland as damage estimates top $3.5 billion.

By LOUIS SAHAGUN and JUDY PASTERNAK

July 14, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS. Sahagun reported from Des Moines and Pasternak from Chicago. Times staff writers Stephen Braun in Quincy, Ill., and J. Michael Kennedy in St. Louis contributed to this story

DES MOINES —

Torrential rains pounded this flood-stricken city on Tuesday, threatening a crucial water treatment plant and raising fears of an outbreak of water-borne diseases, while the Mississippi River continued roaring out of its banks, swallowing farmland from Minnesota through Missouri.

Storms raked across Iowa, southern Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin Tuesday, pumping more energy into the cresting Mississippi River. Another rain belt formed to the south, across Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri, pouring water into the Missouri River. The effect, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials, will be to keep high waters battering levees for longer periods of time.

In the Omaha suburb of Papillion, an inch of rain fell in just six minutes. In Kansas City, Mo., two unofficial rain gauges showed half an inch of water streaming from the sky in less than 10 minutes.

And thunderstorms were expected to plow through the same areas again overnight, drenching some parts of the region with as much as six inches in a single day. The entire state of Iowa was covered by a flash flood watch Tuesday night.

“It’s a very potent situation,” said Jim Henderson, deputy director of the National Weather Service Severe Storm Forecast Center in Kansas City, Mo.

President Clinton said he would visit the region today on his way back to Washington.

Clinton told reporters in Hawaii that he had talked to Budget Director Leon E. Panetta about putting together an aid package. “Frankly, whatever we do, we are going to have to leave open the option of going back for more, depending on what the damage is. Those folks need some help.”

Damage estimates in the Midwest top $3.5 billion. About 20 deaths have been blamed on the floods. Over 30,000 people have been evacuated, and some 18,500 homes are damaged. Over 8 million acres of land have been flooded. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said 222 Midwest counties and one city, St. Louis, have been declared federal disaster areas, and the Agriculture Department named 304 counties in six states eligible for emergency loans because of crop losses.

The ripple effect on the economy is also expected to be large, although experts predicted it would fall short of some other recent disasters, such as the drought of 1988 and last year’s Hurricane Andrew. The Agriculture Department already has lowered its national corn and soybean harvest forecasts because of the flooding--by 7.6% for corn and 3.4% for soybeans.

The main trouble spots Tuesday were Des Moines and the battered levees along the Mississippi in Missouri and Illinois.

Des Moines

Thousands of volunteers armed with shovels joined National Guardsmen in massive sandbagging efforts to shore up roads, homes, businesses and the West Des Moines Water Treatment Plant, which has been donating drinking water to the flooded metropolitan area.

Drinking water for 250,000 Des Moines residents was contaminated when the Raccoon River surged over earthen levees and swamped the city waterworks last weekend. It may be a month before water filters and pipes can be disinfected and tap water is safe to drink, city officials said.

Until drinking water is restored, the Corps of Engineers and National Guard have set a target of trucking in 2.5 million gallons of water a day to the city and nearby communities.

That works out to about 10 gallons per day per person. As of Tuesday, residents were allowed up to five gallons of water at 60 distribution points, two gallons if they did not bring their own containers.

“We’ve suffered tornadoes, hailstorms and blizzards, but never anything of this magnitude,” Des Moines Mayor John Dorrian said. “We have a grave concern about the flooding, but we’re equally worried about its aftermath. That water is loaded with raw sewage, fertilizer, petroleum products and everything else.”

Tuesday’s early morning thunderstorms--the 38th downpour in 42 days--brought new flooding along the swollen Raccoon and Des Moines rivers, which merge downtown. The water overwhelmed city sanitation, firefighting, traffic and emergency medical services.

City and county officials estimated property damage so far at $250 million. That figure included at least 1,500 homes and 1,000 businesses in the Des Moines area that have suffered major flood damage.

Iowa Gov. Terry E. Branstad said on Tuesday that the entire state had been declared a disaster area, making low-interest loans and other aid available. The damage statewide was expected to exceed $1 billion.

City and county officials encouraged all residents, especially those who had come in contact with possibly contaminated river water, to take advantage of free tetanus shots being offered at clinics throughout the region.

“We think sanitation will be a bigger concern than the lack of water over the next few days,” said John Durante, spokesman for the Des Moines General Hospital, which had yet to receive a water purification unit promised by U.S. Army National Guard officials.

The hospital is continuing to operate using trucked-in water.

“If it weren’t for the volunteers gritting their teeth and filling sandbags and bathing with damp rags, we’d close this emergency center and go home,” Dorrian said. “There are Midwestern values popping up all over among people working very hard without compensation or even a pat on the back.”

Less than an hour after city officials called for volunteers to help build a higher dike around the West Des Moines Water Treatment Plant, thousands of residents clad in plastic raincoats and jeans gathered at the facility to form a mile-long sandbag brigade that only seemed chaotic.

In heavy rain and steaming temperatures of 85 degrees, some held burlap bags open for others who filled them with shovelfuls of sand. Still others tied the ends and then passed the bags down the line hand-to-hand toward waiting trucks.

Among them was accountant Lynn Ray, 29, who said she “normally works at a desk in an air-conditioned office taking drinking water for granted.”

“I love good sweat for a good cause,” Ray said, wiping her hands across a soiled T-shirt. “Getting dirty is worth it for having drinkable water.”

West Des Moines Water Works Superintendent John Luther could only watch in amazement as the volunteers worked hard to save his two-acre plant from being betrayed by the river.

“They’re super. They’re giving 100% effort all day long,” Luther said.

Meanwhile, sullen residents fed up with unrelenting rain here lined up with jugs, pails, ice chests and even empty plastic cat food containers for five-gallon rations of water, imported by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and offered at 60 distribution centers across the city.

Theresa Jones, of Grimes, Iowa, has been delivering 82 two-liter soda bottles of water each day to the Royal View Manor housing projects in downtown Des Moines.

“It’s for my mom and her friends,” Jones said, loading the bottles on a pushcart. “I’m going to do this until they don’t need it anymore.”

Efforts like these have helped ease the water crisis for Royal View residents like Karen Widney, a paraplegic who has depended on friends to deliver water for drinking and sponge baths to her cramped apartment.

“This situation has brought out the good neighbor in everyone,” she said, cradling a jug of the precious liquid in her arms.

The Levees

Authorities counted more than 100 sand boils, a sign of weakening, in the massive Sny Island Drainage District levee, a 52-mile-long band of sand that so far has contained the Mississippi in south central Illinois. A country music radio station, transformed into an emergency communication network, blared forth requests for ponchos, sandbags and dinghies at Sny Island.

But in the afternoon, lightning strikes forced the drainage district to pull back most of the dike’s defenders.

Behind the levee was a great, green expanse of prime farmland. Corn, soybeans and wheat stretched east into the haze--untouched so far. If the river manages to break through, the area could fill with water 12 feet deep in about 2 1/2 days.

All along the crest, they fought.

Officials in nearby Adams County announced late Tuesday that the northern end of the Indian Grave levee ruptured, spilling water into a 9,000-acre plain north of Quincy. The district’s southern end flooded early Monday, filling an 8,000-acre stretch.

At Canton, a town of 2,700 in northeastern Missouri where the river rushed past at 100,000 cubic feet per second, the situation was summed up by fire chief-disaster coordinator-insurance broker Terry Fretwelo: “The river is still rising and we’re getting lots of rain here, lots of rain everywhere.”

In the background, a radio crackled: “They’re evacuating the place . . . . Keep them out of the way.”

About 100 workers--National Guard companies from St. Louis and volunteers who had traveled as far as 75 miles--scrambled to shore up the levee. A few hundred more prepared sandbags.

The bags were piled three feet higher than the earthen berm on Monday, increasing what had been protection against a water level of 27 feet to protection against 30 feet.

A good thing. “We are cresting today,” Fretwelo said, “at 28.5.”

To the south, in Quincy, Ill., population 40,000, the crest surged by at 32 feet. The focus of attention was a soggy levee that was still holding the river away from a factory. In a section of town called The Camps, about 250 people were asked by the city to leave.

Across the river, in Missouri, a levee protected the access road to the Quincy Bayview Bridge, which was closed to all but local travelers.

Another bridge in the area, the St. Francis, was open part of the time to offer an alternate route. But most of the day, it was impassable, blocked by a crane that plucked up river debris that had been collecting around the supports--a potential threat to the structure.

The river’s debris included six rusty barges that had been moored near Lock and Dam 21, waiting out the ban on navigation. The sheer volume broke them loose and they bobbed in the current.

Today, the crest should reach Hannibal, Mo., once home to Mark Twain. The water, said George Gitter, an emergency operations official for the Corps at Rock Island, Ill., “will be close to the top of the levee.”

In St. Louis, the surging Mississippi lapped at the steps leading up to the Gateway Arch. Though the city is on a bluff and protected by huge floodgates, there were pockets of urban flooding in the south. The crest, at 45 feet, is anticipated on Sunday.

Far to the north, still sodden, they also watched and waited. The “second crest” has averaged two to three feet below the first one. But if the rainstorms forecast for Minnesota next week are heavy, said Corps official David Christenson, “it will cause the rivers to come back up to threaten the communities again.”

How to Help

Among the relief agencies collecting money for flood victims. Checks should be earmarked for Midwest flood victims:

* American Red Cross

P.O. Box 37243

Washington, D.C., 20013

Checks payable to: American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund

(800) 842-2200

(800) 257-5757 (Spanish)

* Iowa Cares

666 Walnut St.

Des Moines, Iowa, 50309

Checks payable to: Iowa Cares