Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 2, 1993 TAG: 9308020054
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: ST. LOUIS LENGTH: Long
Emergency authorities had warned residents of the St. Louis area to expect the worst today. Instead, the rivers had exceeded their forecast crests by early hours Sunday morning.
By mid-morning, the Mississippi was flowing at more than 49.4 feet above river bottom, at least a foot higher than predicted earlier in the week. At the same time, the Missouri raged past, and over, beleaguered St. Charles County, Mo., at 39.5 feet, at least 6 inches above its predicted peak level.
"It couldn't get too much worse than it did today," said Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Ken Kruchowski.
At its emergency headquarters in the city, the Corps recorded a depressing catalogue of capitulations to the flood: 3 a.m., levee break at Hartwell, Ill., 8,900 acres lost; minutes later, levee at nearby Hillview, Ill., overtopped, 12,900 acres submerged; 8:30 a.m., Columbia, Ill., dike overwhelmed, 14,000 acres under.
As the day wore on, the breaches became more grave. In Alton, Ill., just north of the confluence of the Missouri and the Mississippi, water backed up through the town sewers, filling the streets to a depth of 4 feet and closing a water treatment plant that serves 73,000 people. A water plant at Hardin, Ill., also was overrun.
In Ste. Genevieve, Mo., approximately 50 miles south of St. Louis, an elderly levee yielded, serving up to the hungry Mississippi another 50 homes. The people of Ste. Genevieve were tired, said city administrator David Anyerer. "It just doesn't seem to end. It's like getting 31 or 32 stays of execution right in a row."
The National Weather Service said it believed the Missouri was cresting at St. Charles, Mo., Sunday. But a peak level as high as 49.7 feet above river bottom was expected to further test defenses against the Mississippi River around St. Louis once more early today.
The Corps of Engineers, which believes river levels could exceed Weather Service predictions, warned that the main threat to the city could come from the River Des Peres drainage channel, which was 49.7 feet deep Sunday and was expected to rise further. Volunteers desperately were trying to raise its banks to 50 feet.
St. Louis Fire Chief Neil Svetanics said the levees on the River Des Peres were "being held together with Band-aids, bubble gum and sandbags." He said divers were still working at the Phillips Pipeline Co. in southern St. Louis to moor propane tanks that were threatened by the flood waters.
Among the areas hardest hit Sunday was nearby St. Charles County, Mo., which surrendered a further 2 percent of its land to the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, raising to 45 percent the proportion of the county now submerged.
"We're losing the battle fast," said Petra Haws, spokeswoman for the St. Charles County Emergency Center. "We have no levees left."
Hundreds of volunteers were bused to the northern part of the county to help in frantic sandbagging efforts around a few still-dry communities, but the rising waters were threatening to close the only remaining road route to the area.
In the small settlement of Prairie Homes, Mo., drilling technician Alan Karns, 33, was sending away his two children, aged 4 and 1 1/2, but staying with his house. "I really don't have anywhere to go," he said.
A little more than 100 yards away Geff Runyon, 26, a private truck operator, said he was awakened at 3 a.m. by a local resident who told him that water was running down the road outside his house.
By lunch time, he and friends had thrown up a 6,000-sandbag wall and were hoping for the best. "It's Mother Nature; it's going to do what it's going to do," he said.
By an irony that will amuse few members of the small community of Prairie Homes, Mo., residents were told earlier this year that they no longer needed to buy federal flood insurance. "We'd had it since 1973 but we stopped in February," said Joyce Speraneo, 52, pointing out a fish swimming across her back garden.
The Speraneos had placed their faith in a flimsy wall of sandbags and a diesel-powered pump that removed water from their garden almost as quickly as it seeped in from the flooded fields beyond. Two cabin cruisers dumped by the capricious Missouri - normally 2 1/2 miles away - were perched uncomfortably a few yards beyond their ad hoc levee.
"1973 was supposed to be the hundred-year flood, and it was nowhere near us," said Ron Speraneo, 55, a marine loss adjuster. "Now this is the 500-year flood, so I figure I must be 600 years old."
Many in the area had been lulled into a false sense of security by several days of dry weather and tentative weather service declarations that the flood was all but over. But unexpected heavy rains in the St. Louis area and to the north pushed river levels up by as much as 6 inches.
by CNB