Flash Flood Kills 4 in Missouri Cave : Disaster: Three other spelunkers are presumed dead in underground tragedy. Region’s death toll now at 38. Crews work to plug leak under St. Louis flood wall.

ST. LOUIS —  The Mississippi River sent a chill through St. Louis on Friday when it caused a major leak under the city’s flood wall. A flash flood drowned three boys and a young man exploring a cave south of the city and swept away a woman and two boys, who were presumed dead.

The flood wall sprung its leak in an area called Baden, in the north end of the city. The leak sent workers at a nearby factory scurrying for safety. St. Louis residents had considered the wall a fortress, securing the city from the flood devastation that has visited nearby towns and even one of its own southern neighborhoods.

City workers and crews from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dumped tons of dirt into the leak and slowed its flow. Officials at the St. Louis emergency operations center said they did not think the wall would collapse. They said there were no plans to evacuate Baden or any nearby neighborhoods unless the leak worsens.

The four deaths came when a flash flood filled a cavern at Cliff Cave Park, 20 miles south of the city. It was closed at the time. The bodies of two boys and a man in his 30s were found in a twisted knot just outside the cave. Authorities said the three drowned and were pushed out by water that poured through several holes in the cavern ceiling.

The body of another boy, about 10 years old, was recovered hours later from 500 yards inside the cavern. A rescue worker said the missing woman and two missing boys probably had been swept out of the cave and into the Mississippi, a quarter of a mile away, and were presumed dead. None of the victims were identified.

All were from the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in St. Louis, a facility for youngsters with behavioral and other problems. The adults were staff members at the home. The group was on a spelunking expedition into the depths of the cavern. A spokeswoman for the home said at least 10 boys and two staff members survived.

They were found in two vans parked on an access road. St. Louis County Police Chief Ron Battelle said they were taken to a nearby police station for questioning. The park had been closed for at least two weeks because of flooding, he said, and it was possible that the home could face criminal prosecution.

Charley McBride, a member of a special rescue team, emerged from the cave at 7:30 p.m. local time and said he had found shirts and shoes--but no additional victims. McBride said he went through the 3,000-foot-long cavern twice. “When it rains, it instantly floods in there,” he said. “They never should have been in there.”

The missing woman was described as a 21-year-old college student who was a counselor at the home run by Catholic Charities. Her parents and the parents of several boys gathered at the home in a tearful vigil. They were joined by psychiatrists, psychologists and other crisis counselors.

The deaths raise the Midwest flood toll to 38. Total damage to crops and property stands at more than $10 billion. The American Red Cross counted 32,000 homeless. Weather forecasters said the flooding could get worse. Some predicted that rain throughout the area would last into September.

“The reason for the continuing rain is that the soil has become so wet that it evaporates into the sky and falls again,” said Joel Sullivan of the National Weather Service. “We’re getting the rain that we got two weeks ago again.”

Missouri

In St. Louis, authorities said the flood wall had not broken--but was leaking. They were surprised to find the leak in a portion of the wall made of concrete. Another part is made of dirt.

The stage was set when floodwater began climbing out of the Mississippi weeks ago. It spread across the riverbank, which is about three blocks wide. Then it hit the wall. By Friday, it had climbed to about six feet from the top.

The weight of the water forced it downward on the river side of the wall. It cut a six-foot gash under the foundation, and it gushed up on the city side of the wall. It sucked mud and debris along with it, forming a 60-foot sinkhole on the river side, and it spread water knee-deep on the city side.

Leonard Coker was working the graveyard shift at the Commercial Plating Co., on nearby Riverview Drive when floodwater spurted up through floor drains.

“They got on the intercom and yelled: ‘The wall is breaking! Get out!’ ” he said. “I was out of there in no time.”

City crews directed by the Corps of Engineers worked throughout the day to plug the leak. They dumped tons of clay and gravel on both sides of the wall. “If they can plug the leak, there is a 50-50 chance they can keep the water back,” said Police Capt. Robert Oldani. “There are no guarantees.”

As a precaution, crews erected a stone levee around the plating company. Engineers said they hoped that it would confine the water to the factory area. In addition, they said, if the flood wall should fail, the levee might keep the Mississippi from flooding the entire neighborhood.

City officials said they had no immediate plans to evacuate the area.

Nonetheless, police officers marked topographical maps to track low-lying homes and industries. Crews removed acid and other hazardous materials from the plating company, and city workers went door-to-door in the mostly industrial area to compile an inventory of other potential dangers.

George Postol, chief of the geo-technical branch of the Corps of Engineers, waded through the floodwater in rubber boots, directing much of the repair effort. “The message here,” he said, “is that whatever man manufactures, nature can take apart.

“It is a serious concern, but we are dealing with it,” Postol said. “We don’t believe we will reach the point where it is time to throw up your hands and run like hell.”

City officials said they were trying not to panic residents.

“We don’t feel it (the wall) is in imminent danger of collapse,” said Steve Mueller, spokesman for the city’s emergency operations center. “Should that happen, we’ll have a lot of water coming into that area very rapidly. Well in advance of that, we would have taken appropriate action to make sure everybody is safe.”

The frantic activity on Riverview Drive, however, brought residents to their front porches and into the streets. Some wondered if they should leave. Noal Smith, 67, and his wife, Eileen, 68, who live half a mile from the leaking levee, said they could not believe their eyes.

“ ‘Never, never,’ they’ve always told us,” Eileen Smith said, shaking her head as she surveyed the repair efforts. “We thought it was invincible.”

The leak was alarming, authorities said, because it was the first time the flood wall had leaked anywhere.

The wall is concrete for seven miles along the center of the city. For four additional miles, it is an earthen berm. The entire structure was designed to withstand a river level of 52 feet, measured from a standard elevation established by the Corps of Engineers.

The river hit a record 47.1-foot crest last Tuesday night, and another crest is predicted for next Wednesday. Officials said it was crucial to complete all repairs by then.

The wall held firm during the last great flood, in 1973. But this time the river has flowed higher and remained above flood level longer, taxing the wall like nothing before.

“This is something that isn’t supposed to be happening,” said Jim Brown, a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers. “We are learning new things about this river every day.

The Corps of Engineers said it would deploy inspectors to check the entire wall day and night.

The flood wall does not extend downriver, where a tributary called the River Des Peres winds along the southern city limits and has flooded about 1,500 homes.

A levee along the Des Peres broke when the Mississippi crested last week and sent thousands of gallons of backwater into its tributaries. Combined with heavy rain, the floodwater washed into a working-class neighborhood.

Since that break, city crews have given up trying to repair one stretch of the levee. They have concentrated, instead, on building the remaining portions to withstand 48 feet of water.

That, they said, should withstand the next river crest when it comes along.

Still farther down the Mississippi, the town of St. Genevieve, Mo., began a new sandbagging effort aimed at building its levees to a uniform 50 feet. Some parts are that high now, but others are only 48 feet high.

Still others are 49 feet.

Jean Rissover, an emergency volunteer, said crews were working on both a three-mile-long levee that protects the town and 12 miles of agricultural levees outside of town. Because of the way St. Genevieve is situated, she said, any flooding along the agricultural levees could spread backwater into the town as well.

St. Genevieve is the nation’s oldest permanent settlement west of the Mississippi. It was pioneered by the French, and their influence remains.

“It is really a charming town,” Rissover said. “But right now it is like being in a fortress, and we can’t even predict when it will end.”

Iowa

In Des Moines, downtown businesses gloried in their first full day of water service since the city water plant was shut down by flooding two weeks ago. Taps were full, but water safe to drink is still three weeks away, officials said.

Thunderstorms raked southern and central parts of the state. Despite sandbags between the still-swollen Raccoon River and the city’s water plant, L.D. McMullen, director of the plant, said he was “anticipating we’ll become an island in the middle of the river again--but not anything like we were two weeks ago.”

Office towers and hotels prepared to reopen Monday, when 40,000 workers idled by the flood were expected to return to their jobs. Despite the return of tap water late Thursday, many large buildings have been given limited allotments--and some have had to choose between such essential needs as air conditioning and toilets.

At the national headquarters of the American Republic Insurance Co., officials decided to use their water for air conditioning. The firm locked its bathrooms and urged employees to use portable toilets that were being installed outside the building.

“I’m not crazy about using them,” one worker said, “but I’d rather do that than sweat.”

The Hotel Savery, which had been using water from its swimming pool to flush its toilets, was converting an old well to run its air conditioners. The hotel planned to use its water allotment for bathrooms and dishwashers.

“We decided,” said Carol Baumgarten, the general manager, “a hotel just isn’t a hotel without clean china.”

A large industrial fan blew humid air through the lobby. Baumgarten said air conditioning would be ready sometime next week.

Not all downtown businesses were expected to be ready to reopen on Monday.

On Court Avenue, which has a strip of restaurants and bars near the state Capitol, workers were just beginning to repair extensive water damage caused when the Des Moines River rose out of its banks.

The only sounds came from hammers and water pumps. Muddy bilge streamed from hoses into the street, mixing with rainfall. Inside Judge Roy Bean’s bar, two blocks from the water’s edge, architects and workers busied themselves on a rebuilding project that could take months.

“We’ll be lucky if we open three weeks from now,” said Jeff Baker, 38, the bar’s owner.

Floodwater was gone from the barroom, but the damage remained. Warped wood floors were being removed by workers. A cedar bar had collapsed. Chunks of drywall were missing where workers had to remove soggy panels and insulation. On the front door, someone had hung a sign: “Closed for pool party.”

In residential neighborhoods hit hard by the floods, volunteers spent much of the rainy day assisting victims as they reclaimed and scrubbed mud-caked possessions.

On Bell Avenue, where the Raccoon River had surged two weeks ago, a crew of 25 relief workers from Philadelphia helped Kip and Lynn Moorsch retrieve a few remaining items from his ruined floor-sanding business.

“We were lucky, in a way,” Lynn Moorsch said. “We rented here. I’ll tell you one thing: I’ll never buy a house near a river, not after this.”

A massive mound of mud-stained bottles of wood stain lay in the couple’s back yard, taken from the basement where Kip Moorsch once worked. The volunteers from Philadelphia, a contingent of clothing store workers, carefully wiped silt-marred floor sanders and other machinery.

In southern Iowa, near the Missouri border, rainfall gorged Lake Rathbun, already choked with water from successive storms. The lake lies behind a dam, and officials said the water line was only eight inches from overflowing an emergency spillway.

“All we need is one more cloudburst with three inches of rain and she’ll go,” said Kenneth Owens, executive director of the Rathbun Regional Water Assn., which supplies water to 60,000 rural customers.

If the dam overflows, Owens said, it would likely cut off a county highway and wash out a vital water line to 12,000 households in Wayne and Appanoose counties.

Murphy reported from St. Louis and Braun from Des Moines. Times staff writer Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

Will Raging Waters Hit the South?

The South is expected to escape the Mississippi River’s wrath for two reasons: (1) The river widens dramatically just south of St. Louis. (2) The flow from the Ohio River, where it joins the Mississippi in Southern Illinois, is actually down a third from normal due to a dryspell in the Ohio River Valley.

AT ST. LOUIS, A TIGHT PATH

Capacity: 470,000 cubic feet per second

Thursday’s flow: 880,000 cubic feet per second

AT VICKSBURG, MORE ROOM TO WANDER

Capacity: 1.5 million cubic feet per second

Thursday’s flow: 940,000 cubic feet per second

“The upper Mississippi is like a dirt road. When it enters the lower Mississippi, it turns into an eight-lane superhighway.”

Bob Anderson, Spokesman for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers in Memphis.

A Giant Funnel

The Mississippi River drains dozens of states and two Canadian provinces.

Sources: Army Corps of Engineers, Reuters

Attack From Below

The bloated Mississippi began seeping underneath the north end of the 52-foot- high flood wall protecting downtown St. Louis Workers dumped truckloads of rock in efforts to plug the leak and keep the ground from washing out from under the concrete flood wall.