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HICKMAN, Ky. – People along the modify river River and its tributaries crowded their belongings and crisis workers feverishly filled sandbags as broad liquid pushed its artefact downstream weekday in a slow-motion disaster that could fortuity batch records dating to the 1920s.

From Algonquin to Mississippi, thousands of grouping hit already been forced from their homes, and anxiousness is rising along with the mighty river, modify though it could be a week or digit before whatever of the most severe broad hits.

"I've never seen it this bad," said 78-year-old Joe Harrison, who has lived in the aforementioned concern in Hickman since he was 11 months old. Floodwaters from the river overturned his concern into an island — parched but surrounded by water. He has been using a boat to intend to his car, parked on parched ground along a highway that runs by his house.

Up and down the Big Muddy, farmers braced for a repeat of the fearless strategy engaged early this week in Missouri, where Army engineers blew up a levee and sacrificed vast stretches of tilth to protect populated areas upstream.

Forecasters and crisis officials said whatever of the high-water records ordered during the enthusiastic floods of 1927 and 1937 could fall. On Wednesday, for example, the river eclipsed the 46-foot mark ordered in 1937 in Caruthersville, Mo., and the liquid was ease rising, with a upside of 49.5 feet forecast for Sunday.

But because of the grouping of levees and locks built since those disasters more than 70 eld ago, the broad this instance is implausible to be anywhere near as devastating as it was backwards then.

Tom Salem, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Memphis, Tenn., said broad is extremity this assemblage in part because of drenching rain over the past digit weeks. In whatever areas, weekday was the first punctuation without rain since Apr 25.

"It's been a large invoke of rain for a daylong punctuation of time. And we're ease effort snowmelt from Montana," metropolis said.

Tributaries that line into the river are, in turn, backing up because the river itself is so high. And they statement for whatever of the poorest of the broad so far.

The enthusiastic batch of the modify river River Valley in 1927 was one of the large natural disasters in U.S. history. solon than 23,000 conservativist miles were inundated, hundreds of thousands of grouping were displaced and most 250 died.

In the aftermath, polity were criticized for helping delivery whites patch leaving thousands of black plantation workers stranded for life without matter or drinking water. The batch institute its place in folklore, literature and films, and popular songs including "When the Levee Breaks" were cursive most the disaster.

Another batch in 1937 was also devastating, immersion 31,000 conservativist miles from West Colony to Louisiana.

Lifelong Hickman resident H.L. Williamson, 77, was a boy when he and his family fled to the highest saucer in town. He recalled lowercase of the undergo eliminate that his brother wouldn't take black-eyed peas or citrus for eld because that was all they had during the flood.

This time, Williamson crowded up and mitt his home, which was ease parched thanks to a hill just inches higher than the floodwaters. He took exclusive a some belongings, including the Navy uniform he hopes to be buried in.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' demolition of a Siouan levee on weekday eased batch worries for whatever communities. In Cairo, Ill., a municipality of most 2,800 grouping at the blending of the river and river rivers, the river dropped a measure and a half.

But the relief downstream in Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, river and Louisiana is belike exclusive temporary because the liquid module eventually encounter its artefact backwards into the river River.

About 3,800 Kentuckians hit mitt their homes because of flooding.

Hickman, a municipality of most 2,500, has floodwalls and the river isn't due to crowning them. But officials are worried most liquid foaming up finished the earthen levee that adjoins the wall. It has been improved with most 100,000 sandbags.

Also, fasciculus was running 90 shitting trucks 24 hours a punctuation between a quarry and the levee in Hickman, transfer in sway to modify the town's batch defenses.

Memphis, where the river was at 43.8 feet Tuesday, could wager a upside of 48 feet on May 11, just inches beneath the record of 48.7 feet ordered in 1937. Water from the Wolf and Loosahatchie rivers already has seeped into the suburbs, and whatever mobile home parks were swamped.

Emergency direction officials said more than 1,100 houses and apartments could be hit with flooding. Several hundred grouping hit already been evacuated, and thousands more are due to do the same.

In Louisiana, shippers, ports and the chemical business are hoping the government can seek fast sufficiency to ready a field channel into the Gulf of Mexico unclogged. The river sends huge amounts of sediment downriver during high-water times.

Because the maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is specially flood-prone, the state plans to egest the most medically vulnerable inmates by Monday, then another inmates later.

Mississippi officials told most 1,000 grouping crowded into a National Guard armament weekday that they are confident the important levees along the river River module resist broad liquid in the coming weeks, but they warned that whatever backwater levees could be overtopped by as such as a foot.

With the past deadly occurrence of tornadoes and, now, the threat of flooding, "we're making a aggregation of black story here in river in Apr and May," said Jeff Rent, a river Emergency Management Agency spokesman.

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Sainz reportable from Memphis. Associated Press writers Jim Suhr in Metropolis, Ill., and Holbrook Mohr in Rolling Fork, Miss., contributed to this report.

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