Mayor John Stiltz
Missouri, Illinois flood cleanup to last weeks; deaths up to 24
of Petersburg, Ill., on Saturday looks over the nearly 2,000-foot-long wall put up to protect the town’s business district from the rain-swollen Sangamon River as Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon toured flood-ravaged areas of their states.
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon and Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner toured flood-ravaged areas in their states Saturday as the Mississippi River and its tributaries retreated from record-setting levels.
After floodwaters inundated towns, forced evacuations and killed two dozen people, residents in the St. Louis area now face a cleanup and recovery effort that will likely last for weeks.
“The healing process, the restoration process has begun,” Chris Greenhagen, pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Eureka, Mo., one of the communities hit by flooding along the Meramec River last week, said in a telephone interview.
The flooding, after more than 10 inches of rain fell over a three-day period beginning last weekend, is blamed for 24 deaths in Illinois and Missouri.
Water from the Mississippi, Meramec and Missouri rivers began receding Friday in the St. Louis area. Two major highways — Interstate 44 and Interstate 55 — reopened south of St. Louis on Friday, and some evacuees were allowed to return home.
On Saturday, while residents took stock of the ruin, President Barack Obama signed a federal emergency declaration for Missouri that allows federal aid to be used to help state and local response efforts.
It also allows the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts. Nixon had asked for the help.
Southwest of St. Louis, Noelle Pace said she packed up electronics, some furniture, and her 4-year-old son’s clothing and toys, and left Pacific on Monday, the day after she received a request to evacuate. She returned home Thursday and felt lucky to find the damage isolated to her home’s crawl space.
“Everybody around us had catastrophic damage,” Pace said. She said she might not be able to move back in for weeks, though, because her landlord will have to replace soaked insulation.
“It doesn’t feel real yet,” she said.
Illinois Emergency Management Agency spokesman Patti Thompson said that state’s flooding death toll increased to nine. Fifteen have died in Missouri.
Rauner encouraged people to respect requests to evacuate.
“This is life-threatening,” he told reporters at Carlyle Lake, in Clinton County in southern Illinois. “It’s not just the water, it’s the temperature. Hypothermia is a big risk to people’s lives.”
The main culprit in the St. Louis region was the swollen Meramec River, a relatively small Mississippi River tributary that flooded communities in the far southwestern reaches of the St. Louis suburbs last week. Two wastewater treatment plants were so damaged by the floodwaters that raw sewage spewed into the river. Hundreds of people were evacuated in the Missouri communities of Pacific, Eureka, Valley Park and Arnold, where many homes flooded.
William Reynolds said he moved at least $50,000 worth of inventory from his Valley Park store to the second story of his nearby home when the evacuation was ordered. He was still unpacking Saturday after the evacuation order was lifted.
Jay Newman, chef at Frederick’s Pub and Grill in Fenton, Mo., said he was mostly stuck in his Arnold home for two days because of the flooding, which closed most of the area roads.
“It was bad from every direction,” Newman said.
While the worst of the flooding had ended in the St. Louis area, the high water was slowly making its way south.
In southeast Missouri, the Mississippi River crested overnight Friday but not before damaging about two dozen homes in Cape Girardeau, a community of nearly 40,000 residents that is mostly protected by a flood wall.
“What we’d like people to know is that in Cape Girardeau there have been so many precautions in place that even given the magnitude of this event it’s really gone remarkably well for us,” Molly Hood, Cape Girardeau’s deputy city manager, said Saturday.
Elsewhere, the Illinois River continued to rise Saturday and could near record-level crests Tuesday or Wednesday, according to Thomas Spriggs, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in St. Louis.
“It’s still a very significant flood,” he said Saturday. “It’s going to be at major flood stage for the next three days.”
Also, moderate Mississippi River flooding was expected in Memphis, and the National Weather Service issued a flood advisory for the Cumberland River at Dover, Tenn., through Monday evening.
Minor flooding along the Ohio River was affecting the Kentucky cities of Owensboro and Paducah. The river is expected to crest there Thursday.
“This is lifethreatening. It’s not just the water, it’s the temperature. Hypothermia is a big risk to people’s lives.” — Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner during a stop at Carlyle Lake in southern Illinois