Damaged Dikes on Missouri River Leave Towns Helpless

A surging crest rolled down the Missouri River like a rat through a rattlesnake Wednesday, threatening cities and towns across the state of Missouri, where long weeks of flooding have shaved levees down to the ground.

Authorities said 98% of all dikes along the Missouri from Kansas City to St. Louis have been damaged, leaving many communities defenseless against the crest. It was moving like a sea swell, at 2 3/4 m.p.h., where the river was wide and deep, up to 15 to 20 m.p.h., where it was constricted and shallow.

The crest was expected to wash into the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers next Tuesday just north of St. Louis, where officials predicted that it would reach a record 48 feet. Workers in St. Louis said they would pump cement under the city flood wall, 52 feet tall, to finish sealing a leak. They said the wall would withstand the assault.

In Kansas City, the Missouri was still at its peak one day after it crested at 48.8 feet where it is joined by the Kansas River. The Kansas, too, stayed near its 53.5-foot-crest. The two rivers tested the mettle of 40-year-old levees, along with the nerves of thousands of residents. Water hammered the levees, and the threat of flooding remained severe.

Nearly 80,000 residents in St. Joseph, Mo., went without tap water for a fourth day. City officials said its water plant should be up and running by Friday. It was swamped Sunday when the Missouri washed into pumps and an electrical panel. Residents stood in line for drinking water, which was being trucked to distribution points throughout the city.

After two months of flooding in the Midwest, the death toll climbed to 43 when authorities in Iowa announced that they had recovered the body of a 45-year-old man swept away last weekend by the Des Moines River. Estimates of damage ranged between $10 billion and $12 billion.

There was, however, a respite from heavy rain. The National Weather Service said a weather pattern causing the floods was finally changing. It issued a long-range forecast for mostly hot, sunny days. Other forecasters agreed, but they made no predictions beyond this weekend.

Across the state of Missouri, communities such as Lexington, Waverly and Jefferson City waited and watched with growing fear as the Missouri River rose.

There was little or nothing to hold it back. Day after day of flooding had already damaged “98% of the levees between Kansas City and St. Louis,” said Troy Fuemmeler, with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Some of them, he said, were “down to ground level.”

“It’s plain unreal the amount of water moving south.”

In Lexington, about 25 miles east of Kansas City, workers struggled to repair a water plant serving 5,100 residents. Floodwater swamped the plant even before the crest hit.

Like people in St. Joseph, the residents of Lexington were relying on water hauled in by truck. Officials said it would take at least 10 days to fix the plant.

“Our problem,” said Lafayette County Sheriff Robert Teichman, “is they built the plant too close to the river.”

Downstream at Waverly, about 50 miles east of Kansas City, the Missouri is normally a half-mile wide. On Wednesday, even before the crest arrived, it had swollen into an inland sea at least 10 miles across.

It overtopped levees and covered 90% of Waverly’s corn, wheat and soybean crops.

It also washed out the road through town.

“We’re bluff-to-bluff water,” said Mayor W. L. Pointer, “just like it was when this country was settled.”

He was told that some officials in St. Louis have said privately they hoped more levees would burst upstream, because it would relieve pressure on the river and reduce the size of its crest as it flowed along.

“That’s an unchristian attitude,” Pointer fumed.

“Engineeringwise, they’re right. But I wouldn’t wish bad luck on my neighbors.”

Minutes later, Pointer was told that, in fact, yet another levee at Waverly had gone under. Floodwater was spewing toward the town well.

He sped off in his car.

“Hell,” he said, “the only thing that can be destroyed here is the well. Everything else is gone.”

Still farther downstream, at Jefferson City, about 100 miles east of Waverly, the Missouri tore loose a tank containing liquid propane, anchored behind a submerged service station. It opened and spilled 18,000 gallons of fuel.

When liquid propane hits air, it turns to a highly flammable gas.

City officials evacuated 500 people from a factory near the riverbank, shut off all electricity to the north side of the city to prevent sparks and closed the main bridge through town.

“That,” said Jefferson City Administrator David Johnston, was “so nobody could flick out a cigarette.”

Crews captured the tank and secured it to a bridge piling. They said it would empty itself by morning.

Far downriver in St. Charles, near St. Louis, a riverboat captain stood on his deck, surveying the floodwater. Waiting for the crest, Greg Bax said, “makes me feel like a bowling pin.”

His Spirit of St. Charles was tethered to a railroad track that normally ends 50 yards from the edge of the Missouri.

“It’s peak tourist season, and we’re just sitting here,” Bax said. “The problem is it’s 47 feet to the top of my smokestacks, which is too high to clear the bridges on either side of us.

“So I’m stuck.”

St. Charles was flooded weeks ago when the Missouri and the Mississippi converged 20 miles upstream from their normal confluence. As a result, said Petra Haws, spokeswoman for the St. Charles County Emergency Management Agency, tourism was off 60%.

At St. Louis, the Mississippi was flowing at eight feet per second, or 12 miles an hour.

Lou Chiodini, spokesman for the Army engineers, said that meant the river was moving at twice its normal speed.

That was of little comfort to the residents of St. Louis.

As they awaited the flood crest approaching along the Missouri, they hoped that the good fortune in Kansas City augured well for their future.

Ron E. Vochatzer, a fire inspector in Kansas City, Kan., told reporters touring its dikes and levees:

“I’m holding my breath.

“If we can hold this water another couple of days, I think we’ll be all right.”

Sahagun reported from Lexington, Mo.; Healy from Kansas City, Kan. Times staff writers Edith Stanley in St. Louis and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.