It's very hard to watch, the waters of the Mississippi, on the news, as the flooding goes on and on, in the midwest. According to reports, the residents worked hard, filling and lifting heavy sandbags, to try and shore up the levees along the banks of the great Mississippi River. The longest river in the United States was raging, from all of the rain that had come down, for so long. The flooding began in eastern Iowa, causing more than $1.5 billion
in estimated damages. Thousands of residents had to evacate their homes, as the flood waters moved south. Residents raced to add more sandbags to the levees which protect, dozens of Mississippi towns which would possibly be affected.
The National Guard joined in with the hundreds of volunteers, filling sandbags, and trying to reinforce,
the barriers, in southeastern Iowa, eastern Missouri and western Illinois. The flood waters swamped farmland and communities. The crops in the fields will no doubt be completely devastated.
The town streets in La Grange, Missouri filled with water as the Mississippi River, for the third time in fifteen years, showed no mercy. The residents had rebuilt their homes, in the town of about one thousand people, after floods in 1993 and 2001. The former Mayor of La Grange, reportedly lamented, to the Associated Press, that he could not do it again.
The problem with trying to sandbag and stop the water, according to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, was trying to figure out, which barriers might crumble beneath the strong, mounting water pressure. They did not know where to spend their valuable time and energy,
to stop the worst of the flooding, before it occurred.
At some places along the Mississippi, the waters are starting to recede in a few areas, but many towns will take an amazing amount of time and money, to get back to any semblence of normality. Meanwhile as the waters move downstream, more leeves are in danger of being breeched, and more towns flooded, fields of corn being
destroyed as the waters run through.
The total estimated damages, along the Mississippi, will be in the multi-billions, according to reports.
A related USA Today story, floodwaters loaded with farm runoff, headed down the Mississippi River, and will possibly increase the size of this summers' dead zone, in the Gulf of Mexico, which covers an area, the size of the state of Maryland. The dead zone, is a section of the Gulf of Mexico, that becomes starved,
for oxygen, during much of the summer, and cannot support fish or other sea life. The zone in the Gulf is the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The dead zone tends to grow after floods. It will certainly be an interesting summer for those who reside near the
zone.
:Now Public
:LA Times
Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those people affected by the mighty Mississippi flooding.