Some await worst, others pick up pieces after flooding

Two more levees along its course succumbed Friday, bringing to at least 11 the number of levee failures.

The flood, fueled by more than 10 inches of rain over a three-day period that began last weekend, is blamed for 24 deaths in IL and Missouri.

St. Clair County, Illinois, emergency management director Herb Simmons said damage assessment was beginning Sunday now that the river was starting to fall.

By Saturday, two main interstate highways reopened south and west of St. Louis, and some residents were allowed to return to their homes.

Alexander County Board Chairman Chalen Tatum said sandbagging efforts were cut off because it was too unsafe for the volunteers. Far more water is to come before the Sunday crest.

“I didn’t believe it was going to get like this”, he told CNN.

The search continued for the other teen, as well as two men in Missouri and a country music singer in Oklahoma.

Twelve counties have been declared disaster areas in IL, where Governor Bruce Rauner on Saturday toured several communities hard-hit by flooding.

Bob Criss, an earth and planetary science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, also blames urbanization, and says this latest spike of rain wouldn’t have caused major flooding if the river wasn’t constricted by levees and floodwalls. The Mississippi peaked at 48.9 feet Friday night, four-tenths of a foot above the 1993 record, but short of the 50-foot mark projected.

Two wastewater treatment plants were so damaged by the floodwaters that raw sewage spewed into the river.

The water plant at High Ridge, Missouri, had been out of operation since Wednesday.

But people were moving out just in case, including the St. Louis suburb of Valley Park, where Mayor Michael Pennise ordered mandatory evacuations for 350 to 400 homes and dozens of businesses in the section of town near the fast-rising Meramec River.

Among those displaced were Damon Thorne, 44, and his 60-year-old mother, Linda, who live together in an Arnold mobile home park that washed away after a small private levee proved no match for the surging Meramec.

Mitchell Elementary kindergarten teacher Amanda Wilson teaches kids at the Hope Lutheran Church shelter how to play the Go Fish card game in Pontoon Beach, Ill., on Friday, Jan. 1, 2016. “We have nowhere to go”.

On Saturday, while residents took stock of the ruin, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon said he has asked for a federal emergency declaration to help speed cleanup of the flood debris in the St. Louis area. He estimated that about three-quarters of the homes were damaged.

In Illinois’ Morgan County, home to the 1,000-resident village of Meredosia, locals were keeping wary eyes on levies fortified with 50,000 sandbags. The National Weather Service says the river is now well below flood stage in Pacific and Eureka, and just 4 feet above flood stage in Valley Park.

The Mississippi River is expected to crest Sunday in East Cape Girardeau and on Monday in nearby Cairo.

“Welcome to my flood sale”, Stivers joked, nodding to a tall stack of water-soaked furniture, appliances and belongings pulled from her home and piled high by the road in the flat central IL town of Kincaid. Most of the four dozen residents stayed anyway, using boats to get around.

“I’m from this part of the state and, quite frankly, it’s nearly hard to believe”, Gov. Jay Nixon told reporters Saturday.

As the runoff from the deluges that hit around Christmas continues gathering in rivers that empty into the Mississippi River, downstream, gauges are predicting flooding in areas farther south as deep torrents roll that way – in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana.

“It’s nearly as if you’re living on some other planet”, he said, standing near a growing pile of debris in a park in Eureka, on the banks of the Meramec River, which flows into the Mississippi.