Clinton Honors Flood Heroes, Signs Relief Bill : Weather: The President commends 19 people from nine Midwestern states. The aid package includes funding for farmers, housing and highways.

President Clinton honored 19 lifesaving heroes of the great Midwestern flood here Thursday and signed into law $5.7 billion in emergency aid for the region.

The good Samaritans included a scuba-diving jet-skier who rescued two stranded South Dakotans, and a 32-year-old North Dakota maid who dove into a basement apartment to save a man whose dwelling had become an underwater tomb.

The President also saluted Steven West, an Iowa National Guardsman who was electrocuted when a radio antenna he was installing fell across a high-voltage line.

“These are everyday people, but what they did was most extraordinary,” Clinton said at a ceremony in a ballroom at a hotel near Lambert International Airport.

“Because of their efforts, lives were saved and a larger disaster was averted. They took on the raging rivers to stick up for their friends and neighbors and total strangers,” Clinton said.

The President issued commendations to humanitarians from nine states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin and Illinois.

Clinton, in turn, was presented with a T-shirt depicting an engorged Mississippi River dividing a map of the United States.

Thursday’s trip marked the President’s fourth visit to the flooded region since the beginning of July. He was accompanied by the First Lady and their daughter, Chelsea.

The relief package that Clinton signed Thursday includes $2.35 billion in disaster payments for farmers, $2 billion for the repair of public facilities and housing, $235 million for repair of levees, $389 million in small business loans and $175 million for highway and bridge reconstruction.

The bill also provides funds for disaster recovery planning, reconstruction of health facilities, job training for dislocated workers, aid for damaged schools, wildlife and environmental restoration programs and legal aid for flood victims.

Clinton noted that the money will only aid a recovery effort that has barely begun.

“It is so easy to forget that much of the work is still to be done. We cannot contain the fury of the river, but we can and we must allow our humanity to overflow as well and help reclaim the lives that are shattered,” he said before signing the relief measure.

The President could not help injecting a political note into the ceremony, saying that “we finally found something that Sen. (Bob) Dole and I can agree on--this bill.”

Senate Minority Leader Dole (R-Kan.) has emerged as the President’s arch-nemesis in Congress, attempting to stymie much of Clinton’s economic agenda.

The President stopped in St. Louis on his way to Denver to meet with Pope John Paul II, who is in the United States to address young Catholics at a huge outdoor mass and rally.

Clinton then flies to Oakland, where he speaks today at Alameda Naval Air Station about federal measures to ease the economic impact of military base closings and defense spending cuts.