Floods Midwestern United States

The Mississippi River may be a subdued beast once more, but a recent spate of storms and rising water has reminded returning flood exiles that the river remains unharnessed. Stretches of high and low water have turned the river into an aquatic obstacle course. The passage is treacherous for helmsmen piloting scores of towboats on the main channel and for researchers plying the Mississippi's contours in survey boats to study the flood's impact.

The Mississippi River crested for the second time in two weeks in the upper Plains, sending residents who had hoped the worst flooding was over scurrying for sandbags. The river reached 23.6 feet in St. Paul--9.6 feet above flood stage and the third-highest crest ever recorded in Minnesota's capital. It also crested at La Crosse, Wis. Flooding has caused millions of dollars in damage in parts of North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois this spring.

The Mississippi River sent a chill through St. Louis on Friday when it caused a major leak under the city's flood wall. A flash flood drowned three boys and a young man exploring a cave south of the city and swept away a woman and two boys, who were presumed dead. The flood wall sprung its leak in an area called Baden, in the north end of the city. The leak sent workers at a nearby factory scurrying for safety. St.

The Mississippi River crested Wednesday at Davenport, where the levees held and a war of words with the Bush administration's top disaster official quieted--at least for the moment. The river crested early Wednesday alongside this city of nearly 100,000 people at 22.3 feet, shy of the predicted peak of 22.5 feet and below the record crest in 1993 of 22.6 feet.

Raging floodwater tore through the bottom of the longest levee along the northern Mississippi River on Sunday, trapping five people, two of them in treetops filled with snakes. The river closed six miles of the Central Illinois Expressway and swamped 45,000 acres of prime farmland. "We have a breach! We have a breach!" a levee inspector shouted into his two-way radio as the Sny levee, the second-largest river berm in the nation, burst at 11:23 a.m., local time.

An Orange County civil engineering firm is about to hit a new high-water mark--literally. Simons, Li & Associates is sending seven employees to St. Louis on Sunday to begin the study of flooding along the Mississippi River and its tributaries. The team's findings could eventually lead to new levee designs and flood-control improvements to help alleviate future flooding, company President Ruh-Ming Li said Wednesday.

Jay Dillingham lived long enough to help save his city the second time. In 1951, the year the Kansas and Missouri rivers flooded here and caused more than a million dollars in damage, Dillingham, then 41, and his contemporaries vowed that it would never happen again. They launched a grass-roots campaign to build a levee that would hold off the next major flood. And when the impressive Kansas City levee was finished several years later, it stretched 20 miles long and stood 55 feet high.

The Mississippi River rolled toward the top of the St. Louis flood wall Sunday and hurled thousands of gallons of water into a tributary that snakes along the southern city limits, knocking sandbags off a levee and sending people fleeing for safety. As residents and sightseers gathered at the Gateway Arch to watch, officials said they expect the Mississippi to crest five feet short of splashing over the flood wall. But it was no comfort to residents in south St.

A natural stick-and-rudder man, Jim Goetsch quickly throttled down, worked the pedals and banked the Cessna hard, spiraling down, down, down to 600 feet above the swollen river. He tapped his thick finger against his side window, pointing. "Looky there. My buddy's house has water all around it--and he works for the Army Corps of Engineers. They can't do a thing about this one."

With the potential for twin disasters at hand, this city of 400,000 and its environs suffered a legitimate case of the jitters Monday as the great flood of 1993 continued besieging the region. The Mississippi River infiltrated the ground behind the St. Louis flood wall, sending its murky waters bubbling up through manhole covers, spurting out of engineers' measurement wells and seeping up to form a swamp complete with quicksand.

Dozens of other Mississippi River towns learned their lesson 36 years ago. After the devastating flood of '65, they built flood walls. But with the third "100-year" flood in a decade now approaching its crest here, this city of 98,000 still has no riprap levee, no steel gate system, no grass-covered dike protecting it from the rising river. And everywhere Mayor Phillip C. Yerington went Monday, it seemed, people wanted to know why.

More rain fell along the Mississippi River as residents piled sandbags higher against the water. Even more rain was predicted, but it was not expected to fall heavily across a wide area, and some rain already was factored into flood crest predictions, a National Weather Service official said. The river crested Saturday in East Dubuque, Ill., at 25.4 feet, more than a foot below the record of 26.8 feet, but it was still rising downriver, where communities kept shoring up their defenses.

It should be a pretty easy gig, patrolling the riverfront here in a small fireboat on a sunny spring day. But the riverfront has changed dramatically. On Saturday, Davenport firefighter Bob Juarez guided the battered skiff under an emergency walkway--"Whoa, watch that"--over the railroad tracks, between the parking meters and past the statue of jazz great Bix Beiderbecke, all the while keeping his eye out for submerged fire hydrants and other hazards.

All along the flooded Mississippi River on Friday, tetanus vaccines were becoming worth their minimal weight in gold as swamped treatment plants poured millions of gallons of raw sewage into the river while thousands of volunteers sloshed around in the unhealthful waters. A national shortage of the vaccine had Red Cross officials in this town telling sandbaggers, firefighters and others likely to get wet to check with their family doctors--to see whether they had a few vials hidden away.

A natural stick-and-rudder man, Jim Goetsch quickly throttled down, worked the pedals and banked the Cessna hard, spiraling down, down, down to 600 feet above the swollen river. He tapped his thick finger against his side window, pointing. "Looky there. My buddy's house has water all around it--and he works for the Army Corps of Engineers. They can't do a thing about this one."

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.

A new analysis of the record flooding in the Midwest this summer says that the unusual Pacific Ocean warming known as El Nino was probably a leading cause. El Nino is part of a complex phenomenon known as ENSO, which causes the water in the central Pacific Ocean to warm up every three to seven years.

When torrential rain caused severe flooding across the Midwest and Southeast last month, the Los Angeles Red Cross sent 24 members of its Rapid Response Corps to help. Elizabeth Parra, 20, was one of those chosen to go. The Roosevelt High School graduate spent more than two weeks working out of a gymnasium in Portsmouth, Ohio, helping flood victims.

Bloated by melting snow and rain across the Upper Midwest, the Mississippi River rose out of its banks and strained against dikes in four states, stopping Amtrak trains and chasing hundreds of people from their homes. Contractors in Minnesota rushed to shore up a weakened earthen dam on a tributary of the Mississippi.

The Coast Guard ordered all boat and barge traffic from a 403-mile stretch of the Mississippi River on Monday, saying fast-rising water and treacherous currents made the waterway unsafe. The river was closed from Minneapolis south to Muscatine, Iowa, and the National Weather Service predicted flooding could approach or exceed 1993 levels. The river was expected to crest at 20 to 22 feet next week at Davenport, Iowa, where the record was 22.6 feet in 1993. The forecast prompted Iowa Gov.