Memphis, Tenn. - The city of Memphis braced for the Mississippi River to peak on Monday at a near record level, and downstream the U.S. government opened a spillway to relieve flooding pressure on low-lying New Orleans.
The Army Corps of Engineers began opening the Bonnet Carre spillway 28 miles north of New Orleans Monday morning to divert part of the river flow to Lake Pontchartrain. Opening the spillway has no impact on homes or businesses.
"We are not going to open it up full bore immediately," said Victor Landry, the Corps' Bonnet Carre operations manager. "It will be a slow release."
The spillway has been opened nine previous times, most recently in 2008. The Corps expects to have about half of the spillway's 350 bays open by later this week and it could be fully opened before the flood season ends, Landry said.
© Reuters/National Weather Service
The Lower Mississippi swelled to 80 miles wide in some parts during the 1927 flood, causing up to 1,000 deaths by some estimates and leaving 600,000 people displaced.
Peak flows are not expected to reach key Louisiana points for more than two weeks.
The Corps also has asked permission to open the Morganza Spillway on Thursday to ease pressure on Baton Rouge and New Orleans, which would force evacuations of people and livestock as it diverts water through the Atchafalaya River Basin.
Earlier in May, the U.S. government blasted open a Missouri floodway for the first time since 1937, inundating some Missouri farms to relieve pressure on Illinois and Kentucky towns.
Through Mississippi, residents were bracing for potential record crests at Vicksburg on May 19 and at Natchez on May 21 and authorities were warning that up to 5,000 Mississippi residents may be forced to evacuate.
Mindful in Memphis
In Memphis, the homes in most danger of flooding are in areas not protected by levees or floodwalls, including near Nonconnah Creek and the Wolf and Loosahatchie rivers, said Col. Vernie Reichling, the Army Corps of Engineers commander for the Memphis district.
About 150 Corps workers were walking along levees and monitoring the performance of pump stations along what Reichling called the "wicked" Mississippi. "There should be no concern for any levees to fail," he said in a downtown park on a bluff overlooking the river.
The warnings contrasted with a carnival-like atmosphere that pervaded downtown Memphis as people gaped at the river, which had widened to three miles - six times its normal width - in one spot.
The volume of water passing by in one second was enough to fill a large stadium, Reichling told reporters.
© Mark Humphrey/APPeople watch the Mississippi River floodwaters at the base of Beale Street on Sunday, May 8, in Memphis, Tenn. The river is expected to crest Tuesday.
Blue, 39, has watched as the water engulfed three homes on his street, including that of an older woman who had to be rescued in a boat because she had refused to leave. Blue fears the rising water will ruin his house and his belongings while washing away a lifetime of memories that were created there.
Sunday afternoon, a garbage can floated in the high water near his house. Some feet away, the water had reached more than halfway up a yellow "No Outlet" street sign.
He became emotional talking about how he has about 7 feet of water in his backyard and less than a foot inside the house, which his mother owns. They were in the middle of a remodeling project when the flood hit.
Blue said he wants the city, county or the federal government to give him a hotel voucher so he does not have to go to a shelter.
"I just want a new life and relocation," Blue said. "I would like the elected officials to come down here to see this with their own eyes and see what we're going through."
Mayor AC Wharton said that despite the tightened timeframe, he's confident that precautions such as door-to-door warnings have prepared the city.
"We don't have as much time, but fortunately we're ready for it," Wharton told CBS television Monday.
Wharton said disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, which flooded parts of New Orleans and other areas in 2005, have shown that you can't simply get the word out by issuing warnings on TV.
Authorities spent the weekend knocking on doors to tell a couple hundred people that they should abandon their homes before they are swamped by waters from the rising Mississippi. Wharton said officials are returning to some houses multiple times.
"Door-to-door is a key thing that we're doing," he said, adding there are stepped up patrols to prevent looting in areas where people have left their homes behind.
Forecaster Joe Lowery of the National Weather Service office in Memphis said it looks like the river is starting to level out and could crest as soon as Monday night, at or near 48 feet. Forecasters had previously predicted the crest would come Tuesday.
Memphis residents have been abandoning low-lying homes for days as the dangerously surging river threatened to crest just shy of the 48.7-foot record, set by a devastating 1937 flood.
The swollen river has swamped houses in Memphis and threatens to consume many more, but its rise has been slow enough that some people were clinging to their normal lives just a bit longer.
1,300 homes in danger
In all, residents in more than 1,300 homes have been told to go, and some 370 people were staying in shelters.
But while some evacuated, others came as spectators. At Beale Street, the famous thoroughfare known for blues music, dozens gawked and snapped photos as water pooled at the end of the road. Traffic was heavy downtown on a day the streets would normally be quiet.
"I've been on this water 27 years and never seen it this high," said James Gilmer, a boat captain and tour guide on the Mississippi Riverboats cruise line.
The current was moving at 12 miles per hour, more than twice its normal pace of about 5 miles per hour, he said.
The river is "probably the biggest tourist attraction in Memphis," said Scott Umstead, who made the half-hour drive from Collierville with his wife and their three children.
Flood waters were about a half-mile from the Beale Street's world-famous nightspots, which are on higher ground.
The Mississippi's rise there has been gradual at about one foot a day, and downtown Memphis sits on a bluff well above the expected flood levels.
Engineers say it is unlikely any major metropolitan areas will be inundated as the water pushes downstream over the next week or two. Nonetheless, officials are cautious.
Kentucky and northwest Tennessee were spared any catastrophic flooding and no deaths have been reported there, but some low lying towns and farmland along the banks of the river have been inundated.
Since the flood of 1927, Congress has made protecting the cities on the lower Mississippi a priority, spending billions to fortify cities with floodwalls and carve out overflow basins and ponds - a departure from the "levees-only" strategy that led to the 1927 disaster.
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