Flooding, flooding, and some more flooding.

[Mike Peregrine]

The flood story is by no means over - - check out the latest here. I'm going to spend the night in STJ tonight and go on a photography excursion tomorrow. Going to try and talk my brother into going, since he's more likely to get me into places I wouldn't typically go on my own. This would be the perfect weekend for any photogs out there wanting to get some dramatic shots - -

Edit - by the way - I don't remember this many levees breaking in '93. In fact, I remember being impressed at the time that the levees back then were holding so well. They were just overtopped for the most part. This time it seems like the levee system has failed up and down the board!

 

[Darren Addy]

Off-topic, perhaps, but for a very interesting look at the controversial history of how we came to rely on the concept of levees (and a history of the Army Corps of Engineers and their infinite wisdom) I highly recommend the book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America.

It is an eye-opener and a compelling story of an incredible historic event that few people probably learned about in school.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

That sounds like it's worth a read ... will check it out.

Maybe Holt County is having so much trouble now because my dad is no longer up there to bail them out! ... He used to be terrific at building and re-building those levees up there. There were a few times that he was forced to repair DURING flood conditions. It made all of us cringe to see him out on a levee on some big piece of machinery during a flood, but he was really really good at what he did and he never even seemed timid about doing it. He also helped build a lot of the levee system around the refuge up there, which always seemed so ironic to me. Originally that river bottom was all flood plain ... then the Corps of Engineers modified everything through the levee system, but for refuges which depend on natural wetlands, they were forced to go in and construct a series of channels and a very fancy control system to get water BACK into where it belonged in the first place. This way the refuge can stay flooded while the farmland is (supposedly) protected.

Edit - by the way - I wrote up a story with some thoughts on the situation here.

 

[scott r currens]

When I got to work on Monday morning the forecast was for the Missouri river to crest at 34 feet on Wed at 7pm. That is a whopping 14 feet above flood stage and only three feet below the 1993 record of 37 feet. In 1993, the City of Leavenworth took 5-days to build six foot high, 500 foot long sandbag wall to protect the community center. This time we only had 48 hours before water would start flooding the community center. The solution was a port-a-dam that we had trucked in from New Jersey. The port-a-dam arrived 18 hours after we ordered it and we constructed it in 8 hours. Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, Mondays forecast was way off and the river crested at 27 feet. The port-a-dam never got wet. LOL

 

[Mike Peregrine]

That is an interesting structure to say the least. Cool shots!

Makes me wonder, though - how in the world are tarps going to hold back the Missouri River ... especially since there is always a ridiculous amount of debris floating downriver at any time. I can just picture a great big cottonwood tree ramming into that structure at 30 mph and tearing it to shreds. Leavenworth was pretty fortunate this time. The levee breaks happened both north and south of there, plus the crest was lower and earlier than expected as you mentioned. Neighboring Platte Co. Missouri had more troubles, sounds like, along the Platte River primarily.

 

[Mike Peregrine]

Nothing like resurrecting a really old thread ...

Sorry, just realized I had never taken these photos off my camera. Just a couple that were taken as close to the flooding as I could get last May ... right at the road closures just east of Big Lake, Missouri: