HICKMAN, Ky. (AP) — Jail inmates filled sandbag after sandbag to protect one of the many Southern river cities threatened by the swelling Mississippi as it broke more flood records from the 1930s and crept higher Thursday.
A flooding tributary threatened to cut off Interstate 40, a major east-west route through Arkansas, and the Army Corps of Engineers planned to blast a new breach in a Missouri levee in hopes of controlling the slow-motion disaster flowing downriver.
Thousands of people from Illinois to Louisiana already have been forced from their homes, and anxiety is rising along with the river, though it could be a week or two before some of the most severe flooding hits.
In Hickman, a town of about 2,500, Morrison Williamson was confident a towering floodwall would save his hardware store, despite small leaks that let some flood waters spray through.
Mr. Williamson was in a nearly deserted downtown, keeping his store open for customers who needed flood-fighting supplies. He said the decision to break open the Missouri levee upstream has kept the river from topping the floodwall, saving many communities to the south.
“They say blowing up the levee saved Cairo [Ill.]. Well, it did. But if this breaks, you’re talking Dyersburg, Ridgely, Tiptonville, water all the way to Memphis,” he said about places in neighboring Tennessee.
About 120 Fulton County jail inmate volunteers dressed in orange or white prisoner uniforms furiously filled sandbags for Hickman. They have made 120,000 since April 26.
“We’re just going to keep going until they say stop,” jail Sgt. James Buckingham said.
Up and down the Big Muddy, farmers braced for a repeat of the desperate strategy employed earlier this week in southeast Missouri, where Army engineers blew up the levee and sacrificed vast stretches of farmland to protect populated areas upstream.
The corps planned to blast a third and final breach in the Birds Point levee by Thursday evening to allow water to flow back out of the flood plain into the river.
“I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Joe Harrison, 78, who has lived in the same house in Hickman since he was 11 months old. Floodwaters turned his house into an island - dry but surrounded by water. He has been using a boat to get to his car, parked on dry ground along a highway that runs by his house.
Tom Salem, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Memphis, said flooding is extreme this year in part because of drenching rain over the past two weeks. In some areas, Wednesday was the first day without rain since April 25.
“It’s been a massive amount of rain for a long period of time. And we’re still getting snowmelt from Montana,” Mr. Salem said.
President Obama on Wednesday declared parts of Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky disaster areas, making the states eligible for federal help with relief efforts.
Forecasters and emergency officials said some of the high-water records set during the great floods of 1927 and 1937 could fall.
But because of the system of levees and locks built since those disasters more than 70 years ago, flooding this time is unlikely to be anywhere near as devastating.
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