With a few days to go before the last stretch of the Mississippi River reaches its crest, people toiled around the clock Monday to reinforce levees already strained and saturated from the pressure of the rising water.
Officials in Lincoln County, Mo., asked for volunteers to help fill 50,000 sandbags to fortify the 2 1/2-mile-long Pin Oak levee, an earthen berm that was so waterlogged that it was like "walking on a waterbed," said county emergency management spokesman Andy Binder. Federal officials said they couldn't be sure it would survive through the river's crest at Winfield later in the week.
If it breaches, the river will swamp 100 homes in east Winfield, as well as 3,000 acres of farm fields, several businesses and a city ballpark.
Upriver, where the Mississippi already had crested, officials nervously stood watch Monday as they waited for the danger to recede. Lt. Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, the Army Corps' chief of engineers, toured Clarksville on Monday afternoon and said he was most concerned about agricultural levees up and down the river.
"I think what they have is holding well," Van Antwerp said. "Now, it's a matter of getting the water off of it."
Not far from the Iowa state line, the river was down a few inches at Canton after cresting Sunday at 27 feet -- less than a foot short of the record set during the Great Flood of 1993.
"We were right up there to our nostrils for about 24 hours," city official Jeff McReynolds said.
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