
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, July 18, 1993                   TAG: 9307180078
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: ARNOLD, MO.                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON PROMISES MORE AID PRESIDENT REASSURES MIDWEST GOVERNORS

After flying over the flood-ravaged confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, President Clinton promised the governors and other officials from nine midwestern states Saturday that the federal government will provide more than the $2.5 billion in emergency disaster assistance that he has asked Congress to appropriate.

Clinton listened to vivid descriptions of the vast and growing destruction from six weeks of nearly steady rain and flooding that has been blamed for 27 deaths, displaced thousands of midwesterners, ruined at least 8 million acres of crops, cut off transportation routes, idled dock workers and caused billions of dollars in damage.

And there is no end in sight. Tributaries to the Mississippi River in the upper Midwest filled with even more rain overnight and Saturday, endangering burdened levees and threatening flash floods in areas already soaked down to the stone.

Clinton did not specify how much more in disaster relief will be requested and he was careful not to commit himself to several changes in federal policy suggested by the governors. But the Great Flood of '93 is certain to strain the federal budget and Clinton's hope of cutting the deficit.

Accompanied by Vice President Al Gore, 10 Cabinet secretaries and agency heads and dozens of other federal officials, Clinton visited the Midwest for the second time in four days for a "flood summit" with state and congressional officials from the region.

Aboard Air Force One en route to this suburb south of St. Louis, Clinton told radio station WGEM in Quincy, Ill., that he would consider requests from states to dispatch federal troops to relieve exhausted National Guard units that have been fighting for weeks to contain the flooding by helping to reinforce levees.

The levee that protected a road leading to the Bayview Bridge - the only one open for several hundred miles north of St. Louis - broke Friday night, unleashing a torrent of snake- and frog-filled water on West Quincy, Mo., and cutting off the last link between Illinois and Missouri.

"We're not in control of this situation entirely because Mother Nature is having its way with us, as periodically happens," Clinton said Saturday.

The "flood summit" was designed as a show of federal concern for the region and featured Gore, looking much like a weather forecaster on the local television news, pointing to maps and satellite images of the spreading flood waters. Noting a dark spot on a map denoting the presence of water for hundreds of miles in all directions along the Minnesota-Iowa border, Gore said the image was of "a very shallow and temporary Great Lake. It is as if another Great Lake has been added to the map of the United States."

by CNB