Rivers Ring St. Louis Area With Disasters

By sneak attack and brute frontal assault, the surging Missouri, Mississippi and Illinois rivers on Sunday contaminated two more water treatment plants, swamped historic brick storefronts, backed sewage into homes and sent thousands fleeing.

Late Sunday, the Mississippi tore three boats from their moorings near the Gateway Arch. One, a riverboat, drifted to a downtown bridge and lodged there. Several tugboats and a U.S. Coast Guard cutter were later able to round up the boats.

All three rivers are due to crest in this area today, and it is anybody’s guess how high they will rise. With the Missouri and the Illinois bursting into the Mississippi just to the north, authorities are now saying they would not be surprised by a river stage here of 50 feet or more.

Most of the city stands high on a bluff, and a flood wall guarding a vast, low-lying industrial zone is designed to stave off a water level of 52 feet.

But confidence, once high, was being hedged. “We are hoping there will be no problems” with the wall, said Jim Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Even if the crest is below 52 feet, he said, the water is exerting enormous pressure on the St. Louis defenses. Minor seeps and leakage were apparent Sunday.

“It is almost impossible to predict what is going to happen,” said St. Louis Fire Chief Neil Svetanics. But “we’re not giving up. This city is going to continue fighting the rivers.”

The great Midwest floods of 1993 have so far killed 45 people, submerged 16,000 square miles of land and destroyed an estimated $10 billion in property and crops.

On Sunday, with part of the western suburb of Chesterfield already underwater, the floods wrested more control in an arc around St. Louis and continued to spring surprises until 11 p.m., when the Spirit of the River riverboat, which houses a fast-food restaurant, broke free. Witnesses said they saw sparks shooting from the craft before it drifted away. The boat’s deck was filled with crushed railings, smokestacks and other debris.

The Inaugural--a World War II minesweeper that is now a tourist attraction--and a barge used as a landing pad by tourist helicopters also broke loose and headed down the swollen river. All navigation has been banned for fear that wakes could weaken already-fragile levees.

Officials immediately began voicing concern about the numerous other boats moored along the Mississippi around downtown St. Louis. They include two riverboats: the Admiral on the St. Louis side and the Casino Queen across the river at East St. Louis.

“We are concerned about anything getting loose because if it bumps into the flood wall or floodgates, it could cause catastrophic damage,” said Lt. Robert Sidall of the Coast Guard.

To the northwest, at St. Charles, Mo., the Missouri River pushed a row of sandbags aside to pour into a 30-square-block area, including restored buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries, a trailer park and housing subdivisions.

To the northeast, at Alton, Ill., the Mississippi seeped under a two-week-old levee and resurfaced, behind the barrier, in the basements of renovated brick restaurants and shops. Fire department pumper trucks sent jets of water soaring back out over the sandbags, to no avail. The city’s water treatment plant, serving 73,000 customers, also succumbed.

In south St. Louis, along the River des Peres’ junction with the Mississippi, police and firefighters knocked on doors, urging 1,500 residents to leave an area now known locally as “Gilligan’s Island” for its increasing isolation amid the waters.

Nearby, all 51 of the propane tanks stored at a Phillips Pipeline Co. facility were loosened and dangerously close to floating away or into each other. Officials said a fire was ignited Sunday evening, apparently by an electrical switch left on at a nearby pumping house. It was quickly extinguished.

About 90 minutes later, a second fire was reported inside the pumping station, but this too was doused. Efforts by divers to drain the tanks were suspended until authorities could survey the area for other fire hazards.

Further to the north, on the Illinois River, the Town Hall at tiny Hardin, Ill., was half-submerged, and the community’s water system was out.

And further south, the Mississippi picked up two farmhouses and shattered them as it broke through a levee west of Columbia, Ill. What started as a 10-foot break quickly widened until a 100-foot-wide waterfall rushed down and spread across 15,000 acres. The river’s force bulldozed trees and crumpled silos.

Sunday’s first levee casualty was at St. Charles, a city of 55,000 people.

More than 1,000 volunteers filled, tied and hauled sandbags into place to try to thwart the river from advancing further.

Debbie Koebel, an urban planner, worked frantically with half a dozen other relatives to save a wood-frame house that has been in her family for 100 years. Although the sandbags appeared to be holding, authorities said they believed that the river could rise another foot today, bypassing many of the makeshift berms.

“Until today, I felt bad for other people,” said Koebel, standing knee-deep in water in the yard. “I guess now everyone can feel bad for me.”

That same morning, in a gentrifying section of Alton, 300 National Guard troops that built the steel-and-concrete levee were ordered to don life jackets.

By noon, Mayor Robert W. Towse had walked Third Street like a modern Paul Revere, warning each merchant that the cobblestone roads would be underwater soon, and so would the row houses that contain their stores. Take two hours to get ready, he told them, then get out.

His rounds complete, he stood for a moment on the sidewalk, amid rising mounds of sandbags, fountains gushing from pumps and the dark water lifting trash cans and benches on the other side of the street.

“We’re losing this,” Towse said, and he sighed.

The levee had held, but the river was wily. It made its way underneath, saturating the ground where old sandstone basements could not resist. For weeks, a few inches had pooled there; early Sunday, the flow greatly increased.

The water checked in to the old brick hotel where Abraham Lincoln once slept when he visited to debate Stephen Douglas. It rose under the floor of the former art gallery that housed the flood control center. Volunteers and city workers bundled up telephones and documents. They left a sign taped to the window advertising an after-flood party in September (“We have donations of $1,000 and a pig!”).

Marc Springman, sweaty from packing in the 88-degree heat, decided it was time to quit. He perched on the tailgate of a four-wheel-drive vehicle and laughed to a friend: “Now the levee will hold all of this water in .”

The pumps whined and rumbled. Work crews were so short of equipment that they paddled boats with wooden boards, hammered a valve with a bowling pin and recycled soaked sandbags from one lost corner to another uphill that might still be saved.

In south St. Louis, those threatened by the River des Peres hurried to beat the flood.

Right on the swollen river, Pastor Lewis Meeks drew a chuckle from the congregation of the St. Louis Foursquare Church by delivering his sermon clad in a brown suit and black galoshes.