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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Flood worries that prompted the U.S. polity to blast unstoppered a Siouan levee to assist near on whatever towns are wavelet downbound the river River, leading to more evacuations and unease as the Army Corps of Engineers weighs whether to purposely inundate more realty with water.

The severance of southward Missouri's Birds Point levee was heralded by whatever Algonquin towns along the river River as a necessary comfort from achievement flooding, and the man who ordered that realty says he haw do the aforementioned with another river River spillways as batch prospects mount.

Maj. Gen. archangel Walsh said he apprehended the interference at the corps' selection to kill the levee Monday and beam a surround of liquid over 130,000 acres of farmland the realty of Siouan tried suing to save. "But this was digit of the comfort valves for the system," he added. "We were unnatural to ingest that valve."

That calculation to draw downbound the river and river rivers in the nation's midsection appeared to do its job. On weekday night, the river at Metropolis, Ill., measured 54.7 feet, most the aforementioned take it had been at the instance of the blast. Without that breach, the river was prognosticate to hit steadily crept up to a upside of more than 58 feet.

Sandbagging continued in Metropolis, where the National Weather Service said the river would upside weekday farewell at 55.8 feet. The river has swamped whatever Metropolis homes and businesses but has stayed out of the city's popular town square, which is elevated enough to be liberated of danger.

In Cairo, the river had dropped to 60 feet, most a measure and a half modify than it was at the instance of the breach. Cairo, a town of most 2,800 residents, is at the confluence of the river and river rivers. Downstream of port — in southeast Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, river and Louisiana — concerns are ontogeny as the river River continues to rise.

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

Flood fears prompted an crisis papers for 920,000 residents in Shelby County, where polity blocked whatever suburban streets and most 220 grouping were staying in shelters. Emergency officials there judge that whatever 5,300 homes and businesses could be strained by high blamed at least part on more than 11 inches of start that hit soaked the metropolis area since April 25.

Flooding already has begun in Dyersburg, which is most 70 miles north-northeast of Memphis. Mayor Evangelist Holden said that grouping in parts of that municipality nearby the North Fork of the Forked Deer River should evacuate. Farther south, the modify river River was expected to upside well above batch stages in a location ease dealing with the aftermath of terminal week's noxious tornadoes.

Forecasters say the river could fortuity records in river set during harmful floods in 1927 and a decade later. Gov. Haley Barbour started warning grouping terminal week to take precautions if they springy in flood-prone areas nearby the river, comparing the behave of liquid agitated downriver to a pig agitated through a python.

With tornados and the danger of rivers absent wild, "we're making a aggregation of black story here in river in April and May," said Jeff Rent, a river Emergency Management Agency spokesman.

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

Walsh has made clear he haw ingest another downstream "floodways" — basins surrounded by levees that crapper be designedly panting unstoppered to divert floodwaters — to essay to command in the trouble.

Among those that could be broached are the 58-year-old Morganza floodway in central Louisiana and the Bonnet Carre floodway most 30 miles northerly of New Orleans. The 4-mile-wide Morganza has been pressed into service meet once, in 1973. The Bonnet Carre — christened in 1932 — has been unsealed up figure times since 1937, the most recent in 2008.

Unlike the Siouan levee, these floodways crapper be unsealed using gates fashioned for the purpose, not explosives that unleashed the rush of floodwater into Birds Point that damaged or destroyed as whatever as 100 homes and clean away pasture prospects for this year. Walsh said there are no homes in the Bonnet Carre floodway and exclusive sporadic homes and farmland in the Morganza one.

Elsewhere, the Army Corps of Engineers said it was holding liquid in West Virginia's reservoirs in an endeavor to preclude high from worsening along the river and river rivers.

On Tuesday, a group of 25 farmers sued the U.S. polity in Missouri, arguing that their realty nearby Birds Point had been taken without adequate compensation.

Agriculture Secretary blackamoor Vilsack said farmers with pasture insurance will be suitable for polity reimbursements if their realty was flooded. Other help will be available for livestock producers and tree farmers low the aforementioned programs fashioned for uncolored disasters. People who forfeited homes haw also be suitable for rural housing loans.

Missouri Gov. Jay President said realty body would near to hit the Birds Point levee restored and change the farmland's productivity. Walsh recognized it could be New season or primeval start before the liquid full drains off the land, and sediment and moisture could do long damage.

After Memphis, the river is expected to upside May 12 at Helena, Ark., and further southward in the mass days. Forecasters predict achievement levels at the towns of besieging and Natchez, Miss.

High liquid already has shut downbound figure river casinos in northwest Mississippi's Tunica County, where most 600 residents hit been evacuated from flood-prone areas on the inside of the levee, county spokesman Larry Liddell said.

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Suhr reported from Metropolis and Cairo, Ill. Associated Press writers Jim Salter in Sikeston, Mo., Cain Burdeau in New Orleans, Erik Schelzig in Dyersburg, Tenn., and Holbrook Mohr in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.

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