HAMBURG, Iowa – Massive sandbags dropped on a faltering Missouri River levee have temporarily fortified the floodwall and given Army engineers more time to construct a secondary barrier to protect a threatened Iowa community, authorities said Monday.
The earthen levee, which guards an area of farmland and small towns between Omaha, Neb., and Kansas City, has been partially breached in at least two places south of Iowa's border with Missouri, and emergency management officials said they expect new breaches in the coming days as the river rises.
"We anticipate these compromises rearing their ugly heads all up and down the levee system throughout this event," Rhonda Wiley, the emergency management director for Atchison County, Mo., said Sunday. "It's not a pretty picture."
The Army Corps of Engineers began building a secondary flood wall to protect low-lying areas of Hamburg, Iowa, because it expects the northernmost breach of the floodwall, which is 5 miles southwest of town, to fully give way at some point.
That breach constituted a 10- to 15-foot-wide section of the levee collapsing in on itself on Sunday, Kim Thomas, the head of the corps' emergency management office in Omaha, said in a statement. The corps evacuated its personnel from the area and the Iowa National Guard used a helicopter to drop 22 half-ton sandbags on the weakened section, stabilizing it temporarily.
Although Hamburg is upriver, a full breach of that section of levee would cause floodwater to flow northward over the flat terrain and threaten the town's low-lying southern neighborhoods.
About half of Hamburg's roughly 1,100 residents were ordered Sunday to leave their homes within 24 hours, and that process should be completed by Monday evening, said John Benson, a spokesman for Iowa's department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Several residents of Atchison County were also ordered to leave.
And the heck of it is that the dams much farther North were only recently opened so it's only going to get far worse over the next few weeks, unfortunately. If you drive along the Missouri River as I do so frequently, you know the river is nearly over its banks already.
Also, so you know where Hamburg, Iowa is, it's only about 20 miles as the crow flies, Northwest of Rockport, Missouri, which had it's own temporary breach:
An earlier breach of the levee near Rock Port, 15 miles south of Hamburg, caused a leak that shot water like a "like a small geyser," said Gen. Derek Hill, head of the Iowa Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. Crews stabilized that partial breach, the corps said.
The Missouri River was expected to rise about 8 feet to 1,098 feet above sea level by June 14 in the city of about 2,500 people, some of whom have evacuated ahead of the planned crest. Officials said construction of the primary levee is still under way to protect the city 2 feet beyond the projected high level.
The Missouri River was expected to rise about 8 feet to 1,098 feet above sea level by June 14 in the city of about 2,500 people, some of whom have evacuated ahead of the planned crest. Officials said construction of the primary levee is still under way to protect the city 2 feet beyond the projected high level.
It's just going to get significantly worse before this goes away.
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From the back of our place I can look down and see the flooded river bottoms. The only way the floods affect us here on our hill is that sometimes we have to take a longer way around to go someplace because roads are flooded.
Thank goodness.
My brother and his wife moved away from Sugar Lake, just outside Atchison, Kansas after they cleaned up from the '93 flood. I never saw such complete destruction and devastation in my life.
Here's hoping it's not too bad.
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