In Midwest, Flood Outlook Appears Grim

Just about the time the flooding Mississippi River was cresting, mercifully, at below predicted levels 200 miles to the north, word was spreading here that the Army Corps of Engineers had worked up some new numbers for this area, bad numbers, again.

In less than a week, the predictions for this stretch of river--as with many other stretches--have gone from bad to worse to potentially disastrous. First it was 2 feet above the 15-foot flood level, then 3, then 5, and on Wednesday 7 1/2 feet.

At 22.5 feet, the river would be a fraction of an inch below the modern record of 22.63, set during the Great Flood, as it’s called all along the river, of 1993.

“It’s only going to get worse,” said Davenport Fire Chief Mark Frese as he stood atop a 7-foot wall of sandbags, overseeing a small army of volunteers. “We just might break that record.”

For hundreds of miles along the banks of the Mississippi on Wednesday, residents continued to build dikes, install pumps, evacuate.

In Prairie du Chien, Wis., where the water was expected to rise 6 more inches by Friday, Dorothy and Al Reed spent the day moving furniture to higher ground at their daughter’s house.

“The basement is full, and it’s on my back porch, and it will probably be in the rest of the house sometime tomorrow,” Dorothy Reed said.

Others have been gone for days, their homes full of silt, sand and fish.

Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.) and his family were among many driven from their homes on French Island. His wife, Tawni Kind, returned to their house Wednesday in hip-waders. “If this is the worst thing that happens to me in my life, then I will take it,” she said.

Hundreds of homes, mostly in Minnesota and Wisconsin, have flooded in the last week, but mostly the system of dikes and levees built after a 1965 flood has continued to hold. Nevertheless, the predictions continued to be grim as the crest moved south.

Two to three inches of rain are expected to fall along the Mississippi in southern Minnesota this week, though as river levels there subside, the rain is potentially more problematic for those downstream who have not yet seen the worst.

The river crested in La Crosse, Wis., at 16.4 feet, below predictions of 17 feet, but will continue to cause problems until it drops 4 or 5 feet, which could take weeks.

In St. Paul, Minn., the Mississippi rose above 23 feet Tuesday for the first time since the 1960s and was up to 23.4 feet Wednesday, swamping four city parks and a small airport. But the river is expected to rise only another inch.

Meanwhile, submerged railroad tracks near Minneapolis kept Amtrak trains from running between the Twin Cities and Chicago.

In Minnesota, Gov. Jesse Ventura has declared 16 counties disaster areas. Gov. Scott McCallum of Wisconsin has designated nine of his western counties the same way.

One step ahead of his gubernatorial counterparts--and, he hopes, of the river--is Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, who issued an advance proclamation of disaster to 10 counties, allowing the state to perhaps move more quickly to help.

On Wednesday, he sent 50 National Guard troops to the town of Comanche to help bag sand and patrol the series of makeshift levies in a 24-hour-a-day search for leaks.

First thing in the morning, the Rhythm City Casino riverboat weighed anchor because the walkway that workers had built over the flooding parking lot was going under. Then came news of the official prediction of even higher waters.

By late afternoon, the advertising salesmen and police officers, grade-schoolers and chiropractic students--everybody, that is, who spent the day sandbagging--estimated the water had risen about a foot since sunrise.

Many were building a 7-foot-high, 200-yard-long sandbag levy along River Drive. Most things on the south side of this main drag, in the center of the city, have been written off.

The north side of River Drive, though, is perhaps salvageable.

Front Street Brewery was all but washed away by the Great Flood, just six months after it opened. It reopened and got damp and dank but survived the floods of 1997. On Wednesday, owner Jennie Ash poured beer for the sandbaggers while her husband got the pumps going in the basement.

“We’ve done everything we can do. Now we wait,” Ash said.