Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 22, 1993 TAG: 9307220150
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"We've already seen ships leave the West Coast without the grain they're supposed to have," U.S. Transportation Secretary Federico Pena said as he examined flood damage along the Mississippi in Keokuk, Iowa.
Also affected, he said, was the auto industry's so-called just-in-time delivery system, which puts parts at factories within hours of when they'll be assembled into cars.
Officials could not guess when barge traffic would return to normal on the Mississippi River, but Pena promised that local officials straining to maintain soggy flood barriers would be consulted. Barge wakes, he noted, "will further weaken levees that are very sensitive right now."
More residents evacuated homes in Kansas and Missouri.
Along the River Des Peres in south St. Louis, where a levee break buckled streets and forced many from homes, brothers Tim and Chris Lynch, 10 and 12, fished from their back porch. But others were discouraged.
"It stinks," said Oliver Eperhardt of St. Louis, as he picked up belongings at his mother's evacuated house, where dead fish, sewage and debris mixed in the floodwater.
Some 2,000 householders in the Manhattan, Kan., area were urged to get out because of water releases from swollen lakes and reservoirs upstream.
Farther west, rising creeks prompted evacuations in small towns. About 300 people in Munjor, Kan., were advised to leave Wednesday, after 4 inches of rain fell, and 400 people were evacuated from Wamego, officials said.
Waters receded after flash floods spilled through Deadwood, S.D., in the Black Hills, far to the west of the areas battered earlier.
"It rained super hard. The street looked like a river was running down it," said Albert Williamson, a cashier at a convenience store near Deadwood Creek.
In Des Moines, Iowa, frustration grew in the 11th day of life without running water.
Residents hoping to take showers, launder clothes and flush toilets got bad news - and blame - from Mayor John Dorrian, who chided people for failing to heed warnings to leave their taps off.
by CNB