Cape Girardeau city residents transformed by disaster

The Great Flood of 1993 changed Cape Girardeau's landscape.

With federal and state funds, the city bought out more than 100 houses in the floodplain and had them torn down, mostly in the Red Star district. The Kingshighway and Meadowbrook areas in the southern part of the city also had buyouts.

In the end, federal, state and local government spent $2.7 million repairing and buying out some 109 flood-damaged properties.

But city officials and others who fought floodwaters for months in 1993 say Cape Girardeau is better off -- better prepared to handle a new threat.

The flood made the city aware of the need for an emergency preparedness plan. "Now I am very impressed by how quickly the city staff falls into the mode of dealing with all sorts of problems," former city manager Michael Miller says. "They deal with it automatically."

But no matter how much you prepare, the river sometimes has its way.

Battling exhaustion

Hoping to save their Water Street home, members of the LeGrand family, along with neighbors, Red Star Baptist Church members and others they didn't even know, were sandbagging and pumping water for six weeks before the night of Aug. 7, 1993. With the all-time record crest of 48 feet coming the next day, river water began running through the three layers of sandbags surrounding the house.

For 10 hours the LeGrands struggled to keep the water away from the house most of them grew up in. At 5:30 the next morning, exhausted, they lost. Water poured into the house, settling at 4 feet deep and 5 feet deep in the transmission shop Tom LeGrand still operates next door.

LeGrand was so shaken the next day he could hardly speak.

Ten years later, he most remembers the heat of the summer of 1993. "It was very hot. And the mosquitoes, and the late night and the exhaustion. It was pretty much the full six weeks we had to man the pumps."

At retirees Woody and Virgie Sadler's North Water Street house, two teams working 12-hour shifts, 7,500 sandbags, and eight pumps operating 24 hours a day for 11 days did fight off the river in August 1993. As the water seeped through the sandbags, they pumped it back out.

At night, Sadler's brother ran the pumping operation while they went to his nearby house to get some sleep.

"We didn't want to walk off and leave it without a fight," Sadler said at the time.

1993 was the first time in their 44 years in the house they had ever had a problem with flooding.

Uncharted territory

The city's planning office had made some accurate predictions about what would happen at certain river levels. But the river at Cape Girardeau remained above flood stage from April through September, cresting 11 times, the highest at nearly 16 feet above flood stage, which is 32 feet.

"We were in uncharted territory with this flood in '93," Miller said.

During the period when the river was above 42 feet, fighting the flood was the city's first priority every day. "It was almost all-consuming for our departments," said Doug Leslie, the city's public works director then and now.

Crews were hauling sand for sandbagging operations almost 24 hours a day, and the city's water and sewer system, the levee and the floodwall had to be monitored constantly.

During the height of the flooding, a Union Electric switching station south of the city was inundated. Power to 42,000 customers in Cape Girardeau, Kelso, Scott City and Chaffee was out for two hours.

The city took steps to protect its water supply. Two water intake pumps on the river were elevated, and a secondary pumping station was installed near the water plant in case its intake structure was flooded. The river came within inches of doing so.

City workers employed at the wastewater treatment plant went to work by boat during that period.

Clearing the mess

During the cleanup that began in late August, the city brought in bulk waste containers and washed down streets. Those streets soon were filled with fog that killed mosquitoes.

The flood led the city to upgrade its radio and standby power equipment

"It strengthened our ability to respond to an emergency," Leslie said.

The new equipment and associated costs of containing the flood and the cleanup came to about $1.5 million. The Federal Emergency Management Agency reimbursed about 90 percent of the city's costs.

The trauma of the flood could not have been handled by government alone. The Red Cross and the Salvation Army fed and housed many who were made temporarily or permanently homeless by the flood. The Salvation Army and Interfaith Disaster Response donated money to deal with the disaster.

During the worst of the flooding, the First Baptist Church parking lot became a staging area where 2,500 hot meals for flood victims and relief workers were prepared daily. Members of a Southern Baptist relief organization whose members were veterans of hurricanes Andrew and Hugo cooked the meals.

After a career as a nurse, Mary Burton had just taken over as executive director of the Southeast Missouri chapter of the American Red Cross that summer. "I was a total neophyte in the disaster world," she said. "... It was my introduction to all the emergency services personnel that respond and make sure help is on the way."

The Red Cross was still helping flood victims early in 1994.

Coming home

When people started moving back into their homes, health officials were most concerned about the spread of water-borne illnesses. Giardia or E. coli bacteria could be contracted by eating from a dirty utensil.

Tetanus wasn't a prime concern because it can only be contracted through a puncture injury. But the Cape Girardeau Public Health Department took their tetanus booster program on the road because people are supposed to get a booster shot every 10 years.

"We did kind of take advantage of the situation," said Charlotte Craig, director of the Cape Girardeau County Public Health Center.

No disease cases surfaced. "Public health is doing its job when nobody sees it or hears about it," Craig said.

The buyout program and relief efforts generally get good marks in Cape Girardeau. The largest loss the LeGrands suffered was about $50,000 in income from their automotive business next to the house. FEMA paid to have the house cleaned up once the water receded, and Tom LeGrand's parents, Ben and Lucille, moved back in a few weeks later.

Ben LeGrand had moved his family into the house in 1945. They'd had to sandbag a few times but never had to leave the house until the 1993 flood.

After another flood in 1997, and partly because his wife had Alzheimer's disease, he took the advice of their 10 children and the city to accept a buyout. He wanted more money for the house, but said, "I think we did the right thing."

They moved to a house on Kingsway. Lucille LeGrand died two years ago.

Empty neighborhood

The Sadlers weren't offered a buyout right away but finally convinced the State Emergency Management Agency to buy the property. After being out of the housing market more than 40 years, house prices shocked them. "They were higher than a cat's back," William Sadler said.

In 1997, the Sadlers moved not far away, to North Spanish Street.

The government buyout was fair, he said. "We're very happy with the way things worked out. We didn't get enough money to pay for the house, but you can't expect that with inflation."

Today the area where most of the buyouts occurred looks like park land.

Tom LeGrand thinks none of this would have happened if the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hadn't tinkered with the Mississippi.

"I'm mad at the Corps of Engineers for building up the river. There are too many dikes, too many levees that have all contributed to the way the river acts now. They should have left well enough alone," he said.

Rather than building all the flood control infrastructure, the government would have been better off buying land and letting it flood, LeGrand said. The buyout is accomplishing the same thing.

LeGrand says he's done worrying about the Mississippi.

"When the river comes up I just take a vacation. I don't fight it too much anymore."

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182

Chronology of 1993's flooding

March 9: Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau forecast to crest later in the week at 36 feet, 4 feet above flood stage.

March 19: The National Weather Service says the potential for spring flooding on the Mississippi as far south as Caruthersville is minor to moderate.

April 8: Forecasters say the potential for serious flooding along the river has increased because ground is waterlogged. The river is at or above flood stage from central Iowa to the Missouri Bootheel.

April 15: The third flood crest at Cape Girardeau in 35 days is expected.

April 18: Six Cape Girardeau streets closed by flooding.

April 20: Wastewater-treatment plant goes offline, unable to handle inflow.

April 21: Body found of Cairo, Ill., man whose car was swept off the road in water near Miller City, Ill.

May 24: River expected to drop below flood stage soon after five crests in the past 1 1/2 months. The river has been over the 32-foot flood stage since early April.

June 11: High water forces cancellation of river activities at Riverfest in downtown Cape Girardeau. River at 33.4 feet.

June 22: Heavy rains north of St. Louis put river on the rise again.

June 30: More heavy rains along the upper Mississippi lead to new flood-crest prediction of 36.2 feet at Cape Girardeau. Themis Street floodgate closed.

July 6: Some Cape Girardeau residents who live near the river in areas unprotected by the floodwall begin leaving with prediction of 43-foot flood crest and more rains in northern and central Missouri.

July 9: Cape Girardeau County Commission declares curfew in flooded areas. River at 41.7 feet.

July 11: Gov. Mel Carnahan goes to Ste. Genevieve to survey efforts to protect the town. Parts of Commerce, Mo., resemble a lake. Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau is at 43.2 feet.

July 14: National Guard called out to help Commerce residents as river threatens to cut off lone remaining road into the community.

July 16: Highway 25 at Dutchtown closed.

July 21: Cape Girardeau police close Big Bend Road.

July 25: Perry County levee break floods two major businesses. Breach reduces river stage at Cape Girardeau to 44.7 feet.

July 29: Evacuation encouraged in East Cape Girardeau, Ill. River at 45.9 feet.

Aug. 4: Hairline fracture in Cape Girardeau floodwall seeps water. U.S. Army Corps of engineers says it doesn't pose a threat.

Aug. 6: Between East Cape Girardeau, Ill., and Gale, Ill., the Coast Guard, Illinois National Guard, Corps of Engineers and area volunteers work to detain a sand boil on the levee.

Aug. 8: New river-stage record set at Cape Girardeau: 48 feet.

Aug. 10: River declines to 47.7 feet.

Aug. 12: President Bill Clinton signs flood-relief legislation in St. Louis. River at Cape Girardeau is at 45.9 feet.

Aug. 16: Curfew lifted in Cape Girardeau County. River at 44.1 feet.

Aug. 18: Highway 25 at Dutchtown reopens.

Aug. 27: Broadway floodgate opens. River is at 38 feet.

Sept. 24: Heavy rains in central Missouri send Mississippi to 10th of 11 flood crests of 1993.

Oct. 15: Mississippi falls below flood stage after a record-breaking 124 consecutive days above.

-- Compiled by Sharon Sanders