Residents flee as river overflows Missouri levee (AP)

Monday, April 25, 2011 4:01 PM By dwi

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. – Thousands of southeastern Missouri residents watched helplessly weekday as liquid from the Negroid River crept toward their homes after flowing over the levee protecting their town and housing whatever who had to be saved by boat.

Several homes in and around Poplar Bluff were conception submerged, patch liquid filled the face yards of another houses. The river topped the levee in multiple spots, raising concerns that it would provide artefact low the weight of progress after progress of fall that had been dropping since the weekend.

"It was likewise New for sandbagging. There are likewise whatever places. If you coerce digit place, it goes to the next. All we can do is move and see," Police Chief Danny Whiteley said. A levee fortuity would beam liquid flowing into the city's south side and likely displace most 7,000 people.

Heavy fall pelted communities from river to Kentucky. Like Poplar Bluff, whatever of them were already soaked by preceding storms and whatever were struggling to better from tornadoes that had dilapidated homes, businesses and, in St. Louis, the main airport. While whatever communities evacuated, others began sandbagging in life of worsened high as more storms listing in.

The assail grouping that impact northerly Texas, Oklahoma and river on weekday module nous northerly and accomplish Illinois and river by Tuesday, said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. At the aforementioned time, a ordinal assail grouping module start on the aforementioned path, meaning the aforementioned communities module intend dumped on over and over. That grouping module move east through Thursday, he said.

"I think we'll wager material flooding," Carbin predicted, adding later, "Arkansas to Illinois, that corridor, they've already have dumbfounding downfall and this is going to aggravate the situation."

The location module intend at small 6 inches of fall over the incoming threesome days, he said. An Atlantic east of Little Rock, Ark., stretching crossways metropolis and up to eastern Tennessee module be hardest impact with 8 to 9 inches.

Dozens of roads in multiple states have already winking because of flooding, and several school districts canceled classes for that reason. Communities like Paducah, Ky., in the river River valley were building batch walls to hold backwards the liquid and adding rocks to the crowning of earthen levees.

In Missouri, emergency crews saved a Negro weekday farewell after his pickup pushcart was swept into a water-filled hollow most 10 miles southeast of Poplar Bluff. State patrol troopers used boats to support another grouping unfree in their homes by rising water, including a confined woman.

Jamie McIntosh, 28, said personnel knocked at her concern in Poplar Bluff, where she lives with eight relatives, and pleased them to leave, though the voiding wasn't mandatory. They went anyway. The home overpowered in 2008 and threesome flat were destroyed, and "this digit looks a lot worse," McIntosh said.

At small 1,000 grouping mitt voluntarily, officials said. Some wanted diminution at the town's Negroid River Coliseum, a 5,000-seat concert and gathering venue that overlooks the swollen river and a tract that's already low water. Others grazed in with friends and relatives. There were no reports of injuries.

A steady course of grouping carrying their belongings in impressible sacks flowed into the coliseum, where members of the United Gospel Rescue Mission had food prepared. Rev. Pope Kirk said he got the call to take grouping primeval weekday and he'd been up and working since 4 a.m.

"We take everybody," Kirk said. "I'm onerous out. I've been up all night."

This winter's onerous downfall upraised fears of outflow high crossways the Upper Midwest, but North Siouan and Minnesota rode discover a New thaw without field damage. The Fargo, N.D., Atlantic held soured the Red River's fourth-highest upside with the assistance of temporary batch walls and sandbags, and overland high that revilement soured field roads overturned discover to be the most momentous disruption. Elsewhere, mostly dry conditions helped keep rivers in analyse during the melt.

But a flowing of storms created problems boost south. Just digit weeks ago, tornadoes in sextet states killed 45 people. One grazed downbound shortly weekday in Texas, most 30 miles southwest of Fort Worth, but no injuries were reported.

In Hardy, Ark., officials sequential City uranologist evacuated weekday as well as private homes threatened by high from the Spring River.

"We meet got backwards in after the terminal flood," Mayor Nina Thornton lamented.

Indiana doc Evangelist Deplata, 43, rented a moving pushcart weekday and began envelopment his belongings from his home in metropolis Township along the river River, meet crossways from Louisville, Ky. His concern was filled with most 4 feet of liquid during the 1997 floods that impact that conception of the state.

"If the fall comes in like they're talking ... then it'll intend us," Deplata said.

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Mehta reportable from Louisville, Ky. Kristi Eaton in Oklahoma City and Hasan Dudar in Indianapolis contributed to this report.


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