Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 25, 1993 TAG: 9309050291
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Betty Strother
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Till then, concerned inquiries were met with nonchalance. Yes, there was flooding in the usual places. The usual trailer parks and subdivisions had to be evacuated, the usual people who refuse to heed flood warnings were plucked from the usual second-floor windows and rooftops by rescuers who, as usual, came by boat.
It's not that the danger wasn't real or the damage devastating. But this happens from time to time on the river. Only newcomers who haven't lived there for, say, 20 years are taken by surprise.
The Mississippi and Missouri rivers stretching for miles out of their banks is a frighteningly beautiful sight, far more spectacular than the puny Roanoke at its rampaging worst. But there is a predictability about flooding in the plains that makes it less heart-poundingly terrifying than the waters that swept through Western Virginia in '85, running off the saturated mountainsides and funneling through valleys that, in minutes, had become rain-swollen drainage ditches.
The great rivers rise with a power that astounds even those who have lived beside one all their lives, but they come up slowly and steadily.
Folks unfortunate or foolish enough to live in the flood plain generally have enough warning to get the heck out of there, enough warning to move out their belongings, to haul away mobile homes.
Unless, of course, a levee breaks, which is what happened in South St. Louis last weekend, and again later in the week.
The earthen levee on River Des Peres, a concrete-lined drainage ditch that empties into the Mississippi, had been thrown up to meet the threat from the flood of '73, when the Mississippi had crested at a little over 43 feet. Folks expected that was about as bad as it would ever get, at least in their lifetimes.
Then forecasters predicted a crest of 46 feet, then 461/2 feet, and city workers and volunteer sandbaggers worked frantically to raise the levee to 47. They made it, jubilant and exhausted.
The next day, the river broke through. The Mississippi crested at just under 47 feet. And it rained some more.
This is when the people I talk to back in the Midwest acknowledged something astounding was happening.
During a normal flood, the rivers will rise for about three weeks, they'll stay at flood stage for about a week, then they'll start to go down. The levees are built to hold the floodwaters that long.
But this flood has been going on for a month and a half, and is not over yet. ``That's what's driving people crazy,'' my brother, Jon, tells me on the phone. Just about every day, it is raining somewhere in the Midwest. It doesn't matter where. All of the rivers are overflowing. And all of them flow, eventually, into the Mississippi.
``It just keeps getting worse and worse and worse,'' Jon says. ``There's people been out there sandbagging for weeks now, and they thought they had it beat. And the levees just burst. They say a lot of these levees have the consistency of Jell-O right now.''
Where the levees get too saturated, they give way. In some places where they've held, the water seeks some other route to push out of the swollen riverbeds. It might be diverted, but there is no way to stop it.
Across the Mississippi from St. Louis, East Carondolet, Ill., has, I'm told, one of the region's best-maintained levees. Water is bubbling up from the ground.
On the other side of the St. Louis metropolitan area, St. Charles County is swamped by the Missouri and, in the northernmost corner, the Mississippi. Forty-three percent of the county is in the flood plain. Forty-three percent of the county is under water.
This is good, fertile bottomland. Flooding like this destroys crops and causes a great deal of hardship for the farmers in the short run. But if the long-term effects are as they have always been, the land will be enriched by the river. Periodic destruction is the price the farmers pay to work some of the most productive land in the world.
Unfortunately, not all of the flood's victims will see a similar return on their investment of pain. Over the years, booming St. Charles County has allowed residential development to encroach on the flood plain - and the river has called to re-establish its claim. From time to time, it always will. And the homes and businesses it damages or destroys will not be made better by the layer of silt the river will leave behind.
But, like the crops, most of these homes and businesses will be back - with the help of government loans and grants or, in some cases, flood insurance payments. Some of them already have come back, again and again, after less widespread flooding. Each time, people recount with a curious mix of pride and resignation how many times they've been through this before. And I wonder about the wisdom of government policy that subsidizes that.
After writing an editorial critical of the federal flood-insurance program, which is in need of reform, I got a call from a Midwesterner who, like myself, has been transplanted to these mountains. She thought me hardhearted.
Yet I feel real grief for my home state when I see the scale of the devastation, even as I wonder why this is happening still again to some of the victims. I understand that this flood is greater, even, than the '73 flood, and residents of some of the affected areas might reasonably have thought themselves safe from rivers flowing miles away. I know some people move into the flood plain not knowing that they are doing so, or not realizing what it can mean - especially if it has meant nothing for years and years. And I sympathize with people who don't have the financial means to do anything about it once they find out what it does mean.
But in many cases, there is a simple stubbornness - or defiance, perhaps - that is beyond reason. People will stay on the river because it is home. Period.
Folks do need help to recover, but not necessarily to go back to the same old place, facing the same old threat of destruction. Without some change in direction, that threat only grows larger as more agricultural land is developed.
Of course, part of the response will be greater efforts to control the land, rather than conform to its nature. Sometimes that must be - and sometimes it even works.
Many levees are holding, and the 52-foot concrete floodwall, designed and built to Army Corps of Engineers standards, is protecting downtown St. Louis. The metropolitan area's crucial public services are safe. So far, there is water to drink and water to flush in all but a few neighborhoods.
But as I write this, it is raining in St. Louis. The Mississippi is expected to crest at another new high, 47.1 feet. And the forecast calls for more rain.
The continuing threat is a nerve-wracking reminder that, while we manage the land with a degree of success, we cannot master it. All of us, everywhere, forget that at our own peril.
by CNB