Clinton Asks Flood Aid of $2.5 Billion : Disaster: ‘It was awful,’ President says after inspecting damage. As the rain continues, the National Weather Service forecasts even more in 30-day outlook.

Heavy rain drummed down Wednesday on the Midwest as President Clinton inspected flood damage, called it awful and said he would ask Congress for nearly $2.5 billion in aid--an amount that he said was almost certain to grow.

Rain fell hard in Kansas and Missouri. Forecasters said new storms were headed northeast, straight toward the hardest hit part of the Mississippi River basin. Worse, the National Weather Service issued a 30-day outlook loaded with still more rain.

A month of flooding in the Midwest has killed 22 people--13 in Missouri alone. Water, heavy and dark as an evil thought, has spread over miles. It has destroyed city neighborhoods, highways, small towns and countless farms. Total flood damage has been estimated at nearly $3.5 billion--more than $1 billion in excess of Clinton’s request for aid.

It was the second time in 10 days that the President visited Iowa, where Des Moines has the distinction of being the largest city in American history to lose its water supply. A quarter of a million residents depended on lines at 79 shopping centers and other distribution points to get drinking water--two gallons at a time--from Army tank trucks.

“It was awful,” Clinton said after a 40-minute helicopter tour of damage along the Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, which meet at Des Moines. The two rivers were swollen to nearly a mile wide in places, with water levels well over the once-in-a-century mark.

When he visited Davenport, Iowa, last week before going to Japan for an economic summit, the President pledged nearly $400 million in aid. As days passed and the flooding grew ever worse, Clinton said he would ask Congress for $1.2 billion. In Des Moines on Wednesday, he said his request would total $2.48 billion.

“We may have to revise the package upward (even further),” Clinton said in a CNN interview, “after we find out what the real losses are.” He added during a TV and radio call-in show that this revision might come “in the next four or five days.”

That his package might need considerable revision seemed clear from the weather forecasts.

In its 30-day outlook, the National Weather service said chances were at least 55% that the Upper Mississippi Valley and much of the Great Lakes region would get above-median precipitation through mid-August.

The Upper Mississippi Valley includes hard-hit Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

One private forecaster, Pete Leavitt, with Weather Services Inc., called the 30-day outlook “a classic persistent pattern.”

It means “bad weather all around,” he said. Eventually the weather pattern would shift, he said, but the questions were when and how far.

Clinton’s Visit

The President flew to Des Moines from Hawaii, where he had vacationed for three days after completing a weeklong trip to Japan and Korea. He pushed up his departure time by 12 hours to give him most of the day in Iowa.

He was greeted by a sign that said: “Aloha, Bill. Welcome To The Other Big Island.”

Clinton found a city without water since Sunday, when the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers knocked out its water plant. City officials said they hoped to have water flowing for toilets and washing machines by Sunday. But clean drinking water, they said, was a month away.

The President visited a water distribution site outside a Hy-Vee Food & Drug Store. He told people standing in line: “I’ve never seen anything on this scale before.” He filled sandbags, hugged a sobbing woman and consoled an 8-year-old child.

“We’ll do what we can to help,” he said. “But in the end, it is the inner strength of people and the support of the communities and families that will bring us through. We’ve got to pick up the pieces and go on.

“That’s what Americans do.”

Rodney Anderson, a pipe lineman who talked to the President, said afterward: “A person has to have water. You can’t flush a toilet without it. You can’t wash without it. You can’t drink without it. You don’t really know what you have until you lose it.”

Anderson said Clinton’s visit was important, but he added: “He cannot give us the kind of help we need. We need some kind of divine intervention. He can’t make the rain end. He can’t make the water recede.”

Deficit Impact

Administration officials conceded that Clinton’s request for more aid would deepen the federal deficit. But they said it was necessary. “There is an emergency that has to be taken care of,” Clinton aide Bruce Lindsey said. “It’s that simple.”

In fact, said Christopher Edley, associate director of the Office of Management and Budget, the deficit would get even worse if the government did not help repair the Midwest economy. Edley, who rode with the President in his helicopter, said that “you could see the water around homes and fields and businesses.

“If you don’t get those back up and running,” he said, “the deficit is going to soar.”

If Clinton gets his request for $2.48 billion, it will be less than a quarter of what Congress paid for hurricane damage last year.

Congress appropriated $11.1 billion in September to pay for damage caused by Hurricane Andrew, which devastated Florida and Louisiana, and by Hurricane Iniki, which spread its destruction across the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

Officials emphasized that until the flooding ends and the harvest comes in this fall, allowing a final calculation of damages to crops, the costs of this disaster will remain uncertain.

Some Midwestern politicians complained that Clinton’s request for aid would not be enough.

“It’s inadequate. In-ad-e-quate. Totally inadequate,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) fumed about the $2.4-billion package. The damages will be “double, triple that. How am I going to tell my people we’re going to give $3 billion to the Russians and only $2 billion here?”

Edley, the associate director of Clinton’s budget office, responded: “Sen. Harkin has not been briefed on the package.” He noted that Clinton’s request is only one part of an overall federal response to the disaster.

It does not include, Edley said, hundreds of millions of dollars to be distributed later this year from existing programs that provide funds such as crop insurance, farm price-support payments and unemployment compensation. All, he said, are designed to compensate for economic losses.

Nor, he said, does it include small business loans and community development grants that in the end may be used to repair flood damage.

Dry skies and stable river levels at Des Moines gave authorities a chance to start bailing out the city’s water plant.

Facing the forecasts of new storms to come, thousands of volunteers worked throughout the day to build a higher levee around it. No usable water meant a high fire danger and lots of inconvenience.

Relief cannot come too soon for Nancy Soloman, a hotel maid who shares a home with two daughters and their children--all of whom are fed up with sponge baths and collecting rain water to wash dishes and flush the toilet.

Even worse, Soloman has been temporarily laid off until the hotel has water to clean its rooms.

“Our nerves are shot,” she said, sitting on a stoop overlooking a small wading pool filled with soapy bath water. “I feel like running away until it’s over. If I had a paycheck maybe I would.”

“Can we leave, grandma, please? Can we?” blurted her 9-year-old granddaughter, Crystal. “I hate the rain!”

The threat of more to come kept disaster officials and volunteers working full time to sandbag homes and businesses and keep hospitals and distribution centers supplied with water.

They hauled it from surrounding communities that still had some to spare.

The five big hospitals in Des Moines canceled all but emergency surgeries until water sterilization units used in Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Storm could be installed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Hospital staffers wheeled barrels of clean water through emergency doors. Others sent surgical instruments, uniforms and bedding to outlying communities for cleaning and sterilization.

Officials pleaded with residents and business owners in nearby West Des Moines--the only part of the metropolitan area that still had water--to reduce its consumption by as much as 80%.

Fearing diseases such as hepatitis A, Julius Conner, in charge of the Polk County Health Department, warned that restaurants would be closed if they were found operating without enough water to handle and prepare food properly.

Des Moines officials estimated damage to the city at $253 million. They said at least 1,500 homes and 1,000 businesses have been destroyed. Emergency shelters, however, were mostly unused.

“Don’t look for crowded shelters because you’re talkin’ about good old Midwest values here in Des Moines,” said Assistant Police Chief Nikolas Brown. “People who lost homes are moving in with friends and relatives.”

Other States

Kansas: The rain hit hardest at Dodge City. Five inches fell during the morning. A flash flood swept 15 cars into a heap. As the water rose, a woman and two children were trapped inside a sedan. Rescuers broke the car windows to get them out.

Missouri: Rain forced the evacuation of about 1,300 people in Franklin and New Franklin.

Officials ordered the evacuation after the Missouri River broke through a railroad embankment upstream that had acted as a levee.

“Probably the biggest concern is there’s just no end in sight,” said Sue Schneider, a mental health counselor at a disaster application center in St. Charles County. “The prospect of this going on is devastating.”

Nebraska: Three and one-half inches of rain fell in two hours at Nebraska City. Streets were flooded. Officials said clouds carrying the rain moved overhead at only 5 m.p.h., making the storm seem like it lasted forever.

Illinois: Flood levels in the Mississippi River dropped off to 30.1 feet at Quincy--still swollen but low enough to give sandbag crews an extra day to shore up levees.

One day was all, however. The Army Corps of Engineers predicted a river crest of between 31 and 32 feet today--uncomfortably close to the 32-foot mark that had threatened the levees on Tuesday.

At East St. Louis, gamblers used a makeshift walkway to get to a riverboat called the Casino Queen. About 5,000 people showed up Tuesday night, the Associated Press reported, to feed slot machines and shoot craps.

“Life goes on,” said Loesteen Jenkins, who won nearly $200. “There’s always something going on somewhere. People are having funerals every day. But life doesn’t stop.”

Owners of another riverboat casino, the Alton Belle, said they would donate a portion of its profits to flood relief. So far, they said, the relief fund totals $20,000.

In Pike County, 2,000 workers hefted sandbags and secured plastic tarp over the edge of the 52-mile-long Sny Island Levee. After it had held out for two weeks, some workers talked confidently of beating back the river. The levee has broken only once in its 121-year life, a 1965 rupture that was quickly contained.

“Our people are out fighting for all they’re worth,” said Bob Looper, in charge of public works for the flood-threatened town of Pleasant Hill. “This group won’t give up.”

Refreshed by a slight drizzle, a contingent of 330 National Guardsmen from Urbana and East St. Louis sweated in their camouflage outfits alongside volunteers from Springfield and state prison inmates from the Clayton medium-security work camp.

In small towns behind the northern branch of the levee, some residents packed up belongings, prodded by a suggestion by emergency officials that they begin laying evacuation plans.

“I’d rather wait it out,” said Perry Witt, who lives in a trailer outside New Canton. “But I don’t want to have to swim out of here, so I’m going now.”

He stuffed boxes with possessions. He and his girlfriend, Kay, planned to store their belongings in a friend’s barn and find a cheap motel until the water level drops.

“We’ll be back,” he said.