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While most of the media watches the terrible flood waters spawned by Irene begin to recede, and wonders about Tropical Storm Lee’s rain around New Orleans, those of us along the Missouri River continue to deal with record flooding.
Yes, I said “continue.”
Consider this: portions of Interstate 29 have been closed between Kansas City and Omaha since June 28th. From the St. Joseph MO News-Press (emphasis added):
Hundreds of residents still haven’t been able to return to their flood-damaged homes and face the daunting task of cleanup and rebuilding. And the water level along the river is still high in many areas. But it’s dropped enough for some places to start taking down their temporary floodwalls.
“I think this is the first visible sign that recovery is starting to take place,” said Trey Cocking, the city manager of the Kansas town of Atchison, as the floodwall began coming down on Friday. . .
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts that a stretch of the Missouri River above Rulo, Neb., will be back in its banks by mid- to late September. It will be several more weeks before that happens along a stretch of the river from Rulo, Neb., to Brunswick, Mo., said Jud Kneuvean, who serves as the emergency management chief for the corps’ Kansas City district. Below Jefferson City, water is already in its banks.
“All those communities that have been flooded, it’s going to be months before they are going to be able to get in there and start rebuilding and repairing,” Kneuvean said. “Just because the water recedes back to its banks doesn’t mean that the pain and suffering is going to go away. It’s going to be there for a while.”
The huge snowpack combined with unexpected record Spring rains in the upper plains are STILL causing havoc, and will to do so for several more months.
That’s when the real work starts.
Look at it this way. Until the water recedes, no one knows how much damage has been done. Two or three months of moving water can scour away roadbeds and bridge support foundations. Two or three months of standing water can cause building foundations to move and settle, rendering the whole structure unsafe. And as long as the water is still there, no one know exactly what we’ll find once it goes away.
The News-Press spoke with a couple of members of one local levee board:
“When the Missouri River finally gets back in its banks then there will be a lot of rehab work to do,” Mr. Wood said.
Gov. Jay Nixon’s recent promise to Northwest Missouri elected officials and levee boards that the special session would include a call to set aside matching funds for emergency federal relief funds didn’t happen.
“We discussed it at the levee board meeting and agreed that it’s too soon because no one really knows the amount of damage,” Mr. Blakely said.
We can’t even guess at how much repair work will be needed, because the damage is still under water. The nightmare scenario is that the water recedes more slowly than is predicted, ultimately revealing some major damage, but then early snows arrive . . .
shudder
I’ve been asked about comparing these floods with Irene. The short answer is that Irene was [past tense] a three day storm event for folks along the East coast that caused a bunch of flooding and damage, while the midwest floods are [present tense] a three month disaster that is causing a bunch of flooding and damage — and in some places, it won’t be over for maybe another month.
Folks, the Missouri River is still above flood stage from Omaha to Kansas City.
Iowa Congressman Tom Latham came to Council Bluffs, Iowa to view the damage recently. The Omaha World-Herald described his reaction:
Latham, a Republican, was in Council Bluffs on Friday to tour the flooded areas along the river, and he said it was like nothing he’s ever seen before. The worst, though, may be yet to come.
“The real damage won’t be totally evident until the water recedes,” he said.
That’s when officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or perhaps President Barack Obama, should view the destruction directly to understand why requested federal aid should be granted, Latham said.
The congressman spent Friday with Council Bluffs Mayor Tom Hanafan and a number of city officials seeing the destruction firsthand. He said he was surprised by the amount of damage.
Welcome home, Congressman. It may be a surprise to you with all the time you spend on the East Coast, but we’re rather used to it around here by now.
It would be nice, though, if it were gone by Halloween.
photo h/t Susan Abbott of the Kansas City District of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The barges in the photo are carrying rock for levee repairs upstream.
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This is the kind of thing no one wants to find as the waters recede:
Peterr, is this normally a flood plain and does it happen often? I feel so sorry for those who can’t get to their homes and will find nothing left when they do return. What’s being done to assist them?
I’m thinking of criminal proceedings for those politicians that kidnap and hold hostage. Our Democratic Republic was never meant to stomp and drown the tax payers.
ENOUGH ALREADY!
Generally speaking, the whole area is a flood plain, but much has been protected by levees for decades. I’ve seen comparisons between the Great Flood of 1993 and this year’s floods that say the 93 Flood covered more area and had some higher crests in places, but the 2011 floods have been much longer lasting and potentially more devastating. (We’ll check that last part once the waters go down.)
As for assistance, the Red Cross has been doing a lot, but the local chapters are getting mighty low on funds. St. Joseph recently held a “FloodFest” to raise money for relief work.
The Joplin tornado really diverted some of the KC area relief work being done by churches and other organizations from NW to SW Missouri. KC’s philanthropic community is caught between the two events.
I’m hoping Latham will go back to DC and tell Cantor what he saw in Council Bluffs.
If Dems talk about not holding FEMA hostage, Cantor will ignore it. But if GOP members start to talk that way . . .
What happened to the levees – not strong enough, not high enough, not kept in proper condition? Has the gov’t (federal) done anything at all?
i figured we’d hear of flooding working it’s way down the watershed, but it did fall off of media’s radar.
And no one likes hurricane amounts of rain in the mountains – a hurricane went up TN and KY, turned and went out to sea over VA – cows were swept out of their little mountain farms and out to sea.
All of the above. Some levees failed, and some were simply overwhelmed. Some were permanent levees, and others were temporary (or expanded) levees put up when the waters started rising. Mostly, though, it is simply the size of the flooding.
It’s not just that the levee has to be high enough to keep the water out, or strong enough not to give way when it gets that high. Levees have to be strong enough to hold all that water — especially moving water! — for weeks and months on end. I know many of them are designed to hold up for weeks, but I don’t think all of them were built with months of water pressure in mind.
As for the government’s role . . .
The government’s biggest efforts have been in monitoring the levees and repairing them as boils appear so that they don’t fail. Boils are spots where water begins to seep through and boil out — perhaps through areas weakened by burrowing critters. Things would have been much, much worse without round-the-clock work by the levee monitors.
(Note that some of the levees are privately owned and maintained, so that adds another layer of complexity to the whole thing.)
The very wet snow pack from last winter was observed by NOAA/NWS, and the USACE took that into consideration when planning their releases from upstream reservoirs. Unfortunately, the volume of the spring rains was unprecedented, with a year’s worth of rain coming in the span of a couple of weeks in some places, and then more on top of that as the clouds kept coming. Thus, record amounts of water had to be released from the reservoirs before downstream areas were ready for it.
The USACE has been slammed by some for not anticipating the spring rains. I don’t buy that. But the Corps *is* caught between multiple concerns when it comes to reservoir releases. Flood control is certainly one, but they also are charged with keeping enough water in the reservoirs throughout the summer for recreation. Commercial river traffic wants enough water in the river all summer for their traffic, and environmental concerns also play a role. Balancing all that is no easy task, especially when a major part of your data — anticipated spring rains — is not easy to predict.
It certainly does sound complicated. I never knew that someone could OWN a levee. I can’t imagine what the benefit would be by owning one. I learn something new and interesting every day.
Thanks, Peterr, for reporting this story.
Just to illustrate what happens in flash floods in the mountains, here’s a diary with the same message – the pain is only starting;
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/01/1012714/-Homelessness-from-the-VT-Flood?via=spotlight
There is this complication in the area, and other likely chemical messes, to consider:
http://www.epa.gov/region7/pdf/national_beef_leathers-prime_tanning-MODNR_farm_fields_data_summary.pdf
FACTOID: MU’s Missouri Climate Center states that the town of Holt in northwestern Missouri holds the world record for a high-intensity rain, having received 12 inches within a 42-minute period on June 22, 1947.
Kind of leaves me uneasy about the potential for problems to come.
Sounds like the worst could even happen next spring.
If it’s going to take 2 or 3 months for the water level to return to normal, you’re then getting into the period when the river will be frozen over, at least north of Omaha.
Could be that the 2011 flood will just be frozen, then on top of that you’ve got the 2012 runoff to contend with.
Thanks for the update. Irene had me wondering what was going on along the Missouri.
What is the status of the nuke plant(s) that had flooding?
The water has receded enough that they have begun cleanup work and ended the “Notification of Unusual Event” status. Per the Omaha World-Herald, the NRC and the power company have agreed to a 130 page plan for the cleanup, testing equipment and warning systems, and returning the plant to active generating service, perhaps as soon as October.
Thanks to improvements made to their flood control plan — improvements made after inspections found problems last year — they made it through this mess without any nuclear-specific incidents.