Mississippi flood may be "large-scale disaster"
Thousands of people are being warned to prepare for the worst tonight as the Mississippi River swells to historic flood levels. Heavy rain is pushing the river's basin to its limits. That is forcing water into already swollen tributaries, and wherever else it can go.
CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann reports that the city of Memphis is preparing for the surge, and many people in the Home of the Blues see their immediate future underwater. The city's mayor has pleaded for calm, however, and said this city possibly faced a "large-scale disaster."
Around Memphis, they're building a buffer, filling sandbags, raising levees near surging waters, and getting to higher ground. The Mississippi has become a menace.
"It's just mind-boggling to see it," said Bill and Amanda Adair, flood evacuees.
North of Memphis, Kathy Lineberry showed a photo explaining why her family's living in a camper: Their home sits in ten feet of floodwater - water that travelled four miles inland.
"What's next? We've never had anything like this. We've lost crops to the water. We've never lost a house," Lineberry said.
At the Dyer County Fairgrounds, a dozen families live in campers. They all lost a house.
"It's bad, bad for everybody. Some of us lost it all," said Keith Ables, flood victim.
Things could get much worse. After the great Mississippi flood of 1927 - the most destructive in U.S. history - engineers built an elaborate system of levees, reservoirs and floodways. By one estimate, from Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf, it now protects four million people.
"Money that we have invested in our levees along the Mississippi River is paying off," said Col. Vernon Reichling with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
That system's being tested as never before by floodwaters higher than existing records.
For the Lineberrys, their camper could be home for the next six months.
"There's nothing you can do about it. It's just stuff. All four of us are here and we're healthy and that's all that matters," Kathy Lineberry said.
A wall of sandbags is another part of Memphis trying to help itself. It has become a race against the river. The Mississippi River will crest next Wednesday at 48 feet.
It's not just the Mississippi Basin that's flooding this spring. In the northeast, heavy rains and snow melt have triggered flooding along Lake Champlain. Surging water has already swamped hundreds of homes and cottages on the lake's 600-mile coastline.
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Here is the PR
http://www.free-press-release.com/news-national-emergency-alert-program-receive-alert-messages-on-your-phone-1305225240.html
Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, are in immediate trouble, right along with Alabama. We all need to step in and help!
If you can foster an animal for a couple of weeks for your local rescue, it opens a slot to bring in another animal. Everyone help everyone...help your neighbors save their animals!
www.totally-anon.at.tc
We know that there are always major water shortages in the southwest, plains states, and other areas of our country so why not harness these flood waters and divert them into huge holding reservoirs ? We created lake Mead, and other ones in the west, why not do the same for the mighty Mississippi? We could make diversion channels that would siphon away a portion of this overflow water to local and far reservoirs that would hold the water until needed in other areas.
1. So, let's locate very large areas of land that has little value.
2. Create large diversion chancels like the ones in California that take water from the Colorado river, but make them much wider and deeper.
3. Design a channel system that would take this water to areas that need water during dry seasons or who get little rainfall.
4. Design several very deep holding facilities like lake Mead along this path where water could be held during times of draught.
This effort would be like the road building efforts of the 1900's or like the railroads, it would employ tens of thousands of workers, suppliers and help the country to help prevent these terrible disasters. It could be done if we put our hearts into it! Funding could come from those who benefit from it and the country would have to pay less out in payments for these disasters&
Think about it, there are thousands of miles where there is just desert or open land not doing anything, lets put it to use! Lets make this land work for us, and we can save all this fresh water! Fresh water is going to become a rare item as the population and demand rises, lets get started saving this tremendous amounts of it now by building the greatest fresh water storage & reclamation project in the history of man.
You see, with the congress in office today, they would never act.
As if rivers never cause floods.