River levee is close to breaking

POPLAR BLUFF, Mo. – Thunder roared and tornado warning sirens blared, and all emergency workers in the southeast Missouri town of Poplar Bluff could do Monday was hope the saturated levee holding back the Black River would survive yet another downpour.

Murky water flowed over the levee at more than three dozen spots and crept toward homes in the flood plain. Some had already flooded. If the levee broke – and forecasters said it was in imminent danger of doing so – some 7,000 residents in and around Poplar Bluff would be displaced.

Meanwhile, in Arkansas at least five people were killed – three in floodwaters and two in a small town where it was likely a tornado ripped through.

In Poplar Bluff, 1,000 homes were evacuated earlier in the day. Sandbagging wasn’t an option, police Chief Danny Whitely said. There were too many trouble spots, and it was too dangerous to put people on the levee. Police went door-to-door encouraging people to get out. Some scurried to collect belongings, others chose to stay. Two men had to be rescued by boat.

“Basically all we can do now is wait, just wait,” Whitely said.

It could be a long week of waiting for the rain to stop in Poplar Bluff and other river towns in the Mississippi and Ohio river valleys. Storms have ripped through parts of middle America for weeks, and they were followed Monday by heavy rain that pelted an area from northeast Texas to Kentucky.

Three people were killed in Arkansas when floodwaters swept their vehicles off of roadways, authorities said. Arkansas Department of Emergency Management spokesman Tommy Jackson said at least two people died in the central Arkansas town of Vilonia, where a path of damage stretched three miles wide and 15 miles long.

More than a dozen tornadoes were reported in Texas and Arkansas on Monday night.

The storm system that blew through northeast Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas on Monday was expected to move into Illinois and Wisconsin today, said Greg Carbin, a meteorologist with the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. At the same time, a second storm system will start along the same path, meaning several more days of rain. That system will continue east through Thursday, he said.

“I think we’ll see substantial flooding,” Carbin predicted, adding later, “Arkansas to Illinois, that corridor, they’ve already have incredible rainfall and this is going to aggravate the situation.”

The region will get at least 6 inches of rain over the next three days, he said. An area east of Little Rock, Ark., stretching across Memphis and up to eastern Tennessee will be hardest hit with 8 to 9 inches.

Dozens of roads in multiple states have already closed because of flooding, leading several school districts to cancel class. Communities such as Paducah, Ky., in the Ohio River valley were building flood walls to hold back the water and adding rocks to the top of earthen levees. Others began sandbagging.