KROTZ SPRINGS, LA. (AP) — Deputies warned people Sunday to get out as Mississippi River water gushing from a floodgate for the first time in four decades crept closer to communities in Louisiana Cajun country, slowly filling a river basin like a giant bathtub.
Most residents heeded the warnings and headed for higher ground, even in places where there hasn’t been so much as a trickle, hopeful that the flooding engineered to protect New Orleans and Baton Rouge would be merciful to their way of life.
Days ago, many of the towns known for their Cajun culture and drawling dialect fluttered with activity as people filled sandbags and cleared out belongings.
By Sunday, some areas were virtually empty as the water from the Mississippi River, swollen by snowmelt and heavy rains, slowly rolled across the Atchafalaya River basin. It first started to come, in small amounts, into people’s yards in Melville on Sunday. But it still had to move farther downstream.
The floodwaters could reach depths of 20 feet in the coming weeks, though levels were nowhere close to that.
The spillway’s opening diverted water from heavily populated New Orleans and Baton Rouge — along with chemical plants and oil refineries along the Mississippi’s lower reaches — easing pressure on the levees there in the hope of avoiding catastrophic floods.
About 11 miles north of Krotz Springs in the town of Melville, water was starting to creep into some people’s backyards. Parts of the town not protected by levees were under a mandatory evacuation order. Glenda Maddox’s husband had temporarily reopened the gas station he closed in December so people could fuel up before leaving.
“Nobody knows what’s going to happen,” she said. “We don’t know if the levee is going to hold up.”
The station’s shelves were mostly barren, save for a few soft drinks and bottles of motor oil. Only cash was accepted — no credit cards.
In Butte LaRose, about 50 miles downstream from where the Morganza Spillway was opened, no water was expected until at least later Sunday.
Chalmers Wheat, 54, was among the few left — and even he was headed for his father’s home in Baton Rouge outside the flood zone. He and his brother were making a few final preparations to protect his home with plastic lining and sandbags.
“It’s almost like a ghost town,” said Mr. Wheat, who was getting some help from his twin brother, Chandler.
Sandbags were still available in the center of town, but there were few takers Sunday.
Krotz Springs is roughly 30 miles closer to the floodgates, and deputies ordered people to evacuate Sunday morning even though the water hadn’t arrived.
Wayne Duplechain, who lives in the parish about eight miles outside Krotz Springs, said he would have his family stay in a camper parked on his son’s property outside the flood zone. He hoped to return, though, and ride out the flooding.
He had three layers of sandbags stacked 2 feet high surrounding his ranch-style brick house and figured the water wouldn’t start lapping against them for seven or eight days. Plus, he has a generator and a boat to escape in if the water gets too high.
“It’s going to be slow-rising, so I’ll get out if I have to. I’m not totally stupid,” he said. “If it comes over the sandbags, I’m leaving.”
It will be at least a week before the Mississippi River crest arrives at the Morganza Spillway, where officials opened two massive gates on Saturday and another two Sunday. There are 125 in all. The Mississippi has broken river-level records that had held since the 1920s in some places.
The Army Corps of Engineers has taken drastic steps to prevent flooding. Engineers blew up a levee in Missouri — inundating an estimated 200 square miles of farmland and damaging or destroying about 100 homes — to take the pressure off floodwalls protecting the town of Cairo, Ill., population 2,800.
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