• More spillway gates opened in Louisiana. Many towns face evacuation. One town braces.
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[url]http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mississippi-flooding-20110518,0,5905215.story[/url] [url]http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/us/18floods.html?partner=rss&emc=rss[/url] [release]By David ZucchinoLos Angeles Times May 18, 2011 Reporting from Stephensville, La.— The water is coming. Ivy St. Romain could see it lapping against the boat ramp behind his house along Bayou Long, so dark and green he could barely make out the ragged tips of sunken cypress trees."[b]Yeah, it's coming," he said, "but I'm not going. I'm staying right here."[/b] As the murky waters of the Atchafalaya River Basin slowly rise and threaten to swallow tiny Stephensville, [b]population 1,433, most Cajuns who dominate this picturesque bayou town are hunkering down to fight the impending flood.[/b] St. Romain, a fishing guide who owns Ivy's Tackle Box just down the road, surrounded his house with sandbags. He and his wife, Joe, stocked up on canned food and venison and hauled out their generator and ice chests. [b]They're counting on a barge to save the town — a 500-foot-long, 38-foot-high barge sunk into nearby Bayou Chene this week. Heavy pylons pounded it snugly into place, and 200 feet of metal sheet pilings were driven into the bottom to seal off the 700-foot-wide bayou. The goal is to divert backwater into the Gulf of Mexico rather than allow it to rise and inundate Stephensville as floodwaters from the Atchafalaya River pour into the basin like bathwater into a tub.[/b] Authorities have opened floodgates at the Morganza Spillway,[b] about 75 miles north of Stephensville, to prevent flooding downstream at Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Stephensville sits at the bottom of the Atchafalaya River Basin, surrounded on three sides by water.[/b] Once nearby marshes, bayous and lakes fill with runoff, water will back up into Stephensville — unless Bayou Chene is blocked. [b]"It'll save us – if it works,"[/b] said Guy Cormier, president of St. Martin Parish, which includes Stephensville. But if the contraption doesn't hold, or if the area gets heavy rains that would be blocked from entering Bayou Chene, [b]"Well, we could end up flooding ourselves,"[/b] he said. In that case, Cormier said, he'd be obliged to order a mandatory evacuation. Joe St. Romain considers the barge Stephensville's salvation. [b]"I figure that barge will save a foot and a half of water from coming into my house,"[/b] she told a slender man standing in her backyard. [b]The man happened to be Bobby Jindal, Louisiana's governor. He flew in Tuesday afternoon as Stephensville residents fortified their homes with plastic sheeting and 400,000 sandbags.[/b] [b]"When the water gets this close, every inch matters,"[/b] the governor told her. Earlier, as Jindal stood next to prison inmates filling sandbags, he praised Stephensville for resilience and ingenuity. But he warned that the town needed to prepare for the worst. [b]"Bottom line, there's a lot of water headed this way,"[/b] he said. Farther north, the potential for flooding was so great that [b]the Coast Guard closed a 15-mile stretch of the Mississippi River at the port in Natchez, Miss. Officials feared that barge traffic would increase pressure on levees downstream and that barges could not operate safely on the fast-rising river. [/b]Late in the day, the Associated Press reported, part of the river reopened. Heavy spring rains and snowmelt have gorged the Mississippi, breaking river-level records that have held since the 1920s in some places. [b]The opening of the Morganza Spillway, which began Saturday, was inundating a 20-mile swath of bayou country stretching 100 miles, threatening 20,000 to 25,000 people with up to 20 feet of water.[/b][/release] [release]The opening of the Morganza Spillway has relieved pressure on levees downriver, leading the Mississippi River to crest at Baton Rouge and New Orleans on Tuesday, sooner and at lower levels than had been predicted. With the continuing release of water from the swollen Mississippi through the spillway, [b]the river is now expected to top out at 45 feet in Baton Rouge, instead of at 47.5 feet[/b], Ron Trumbla, a spokesman with the National Weather Service, said on Tuesday. Without the opening of the spillway, the river would have been at a record level, topping the mark of 47.3 feet set during the 1927 flood. [b]In New Orleans, the river crested Tuesday at about 17 feet[/b], according to the National Weather Service. While the massive diversion of water through the spillway seems to have spared Louisiana’s largest cities from widespread flooding, it is expected to mean the inundation of hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and thousands of homes, as water from the spillway pours out into the Atchafalaya River basin. Evacuations have been taking place for days in the towns and communities throughout the basin, along with large-scale operations to protect these towns with sandbags and other barriers. [b]With 396 million cubic feet of water per hour rushing south from the newly opened Morganza Spillway[/b] and record levels of water still churning down the Mississippi, residents and government officials remained on alert. “We’re absolutely still concerned,” Mark Cooper, director of the Louisiana Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said Monday.[b] “We’re still at a full activation, 24/7 emergency operation.”[/b] State officials estimated that [b]at least 2,500 people were being evacuated and that several communities in Southern Louisiana could be covered in several feet of water in the coming days.[/b] As many as 25,000 people could be directly affected, Mr. Cooper said. Those who had evacuated from the small Cajun community of Butte La Rose over the weekend had been told the forecast was for a river level of 29 feet, which would translate to about seven feet of water or more in the center of the community. Now, the level is estimated to be about 27 feet or lower when the water crests sometime next week. “We heard today that as of next Wednesday it will be at the 25 mark,” said Charlene Guirdy, 57, who packed her belongings and left last weekend. Her house on the Atchafalaya River is nine feet off the ground. “Twenty-five feet would keep it out of my house,” Ms. Guirdy said. Still, she and others affected were concerned that the companies that insure them against floods might not pay because the flood was man-made. Officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency say that is not the case. Under the National Flood Insurance Program, policyholders by law will be covered, whether they own federally mandated policies or private ones. [b]For people without insurance, just how much state or federal aid will come their way has yet to be determined.[/b] So far, Gov. Bobby Jindal has asked the federal government for, and received, only a level of help that has brought FEMA supplies and personnel to aid with evacuations and with shoring up areas that are about to or have taken on water. If the governor believes the state cannot take care of the long-term needs of residents whose homes and businesses are damaged, he can ask for a major disaster declaration. But that step has not been taken, and there are no assurances that President Obama would grant such a request. All of it is dependent on how bad the flooding gets. On Monday, the new models from the Army Corps showed water was moving more slowly than it did in 1973, the last time the area that encompasses the heart of Cajun country was intentionally flooded to divert water from a dangerously high Mississippi River. Unlike 1973, on which the original forecast was built, the ground is much drier and is absorbing more water. Also, a large system of commercial crawfish ponds, with their own protective levees, has been built since the corps last flooded the basin nearly 40 years ago. Those ponds and much heavier brush are further slowing the flow of water. [b]In addition, the corps is being more conservative than the last time around in how many of the 125 gates that make up the Morganza Spillway are being opened. As of Monday, only 11 had been opened.[/b] “Everything’s been pushed later, which is a great thing,” said First Sgt. Jimmy Hankins, an Army Corps spokesman. “It allows people more time to get things in order and allows the wildlife more time to get out of there.”[/release] [editline]18th May 2011[/editline] [img]http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2011-05/61658039.jpg[/img] [img]http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2011-05/61683675.jpg[/img]
I hope it works...
My town is too far above sea level to flood.
I'd hate to be the one having to make these kinds of decisions.
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