FAILED LEVEES MADE '27 FLOOD DEVASTATING

The 1927 flood along the Mississippi River buried New Madrid and other Bootheel towns in a sea of water.

Seventy years ago today, 1,200 feet of a government levee on the flood-swollen river crumbled at Dorena in Mississippi County. The river poured through the breach, tearing down trees, sweeping away buildings -- and destroying public confidence in levees that federal officials insisted would hold.

The single break in the levee flooded 175,000 acres in the Bootheel. In the next few days, the river topped and broke through more levees, flooding New Madrid and other Bootheel towns.

Boxcars became temporary homes for flood victims all across the region.

Downtown Cape Girardeau had its share of flooding because the city didn't have a floodwall then. But the rest of the city was in good shape.

Things weren't as good on the Illinois side, where a levee broke near Wolf Lake on the same day that the Dorena levee failed.

East Cape Girardeau, Ill., was virtually abandoned to the floodwaters.

By April 21, Cape Girardeau housed about 700 Illinois residents who had been displaced by flooding, the Southeast Missourian reported. They were housed in homes, at Houck Field House and in a building that once stood at Capaha Park.

Flood stories dominated the newspaper's front pages for days.

The flood rolled southward, wreaking havoc on both sides of the river all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

Retired farmer Ed LaValle, 89, of New Madrid remembers the flood. He was about 20 when the flood hit, overrunning a levee north of New Madrid on April 19.

"It flooded the whole area, every house in town and all over this area," LaValle recalled Tuesday.

LaValle's family packed up and moved in with relatives at Malden.

LaValle and a friend stayed in the flooded river town. "We rode around town in a boat," he said.

LaValle stayed dry on the second floor of the family's frame home. Furniture and other possessions in the house were put on scaffolds to keep them dry, he said.

New Madrid remained flooded for several days. "People would go up and down the streets in boats," he said.

LaValle said waves from a boat broke the glass window of a Chinese grocery store. "People just rode in there in boats and got everything off the shelves," he said.

LaValle said some residents saw it as an opportunity to get free food.

Two years after the flood, LaValle took a job rebuilding Southeast Missouri levees for the Corps of Engineers. He spent about 15 years working on levees.

LaValle doesn't expect a repeat of the 1927 flood. "They have improved the levees too much," he said.

Dorena farmer Wendell Choate, 77, remembers the flood. He and his parents lived across the river at Hickman. But Choate's grandparents had a farm in the Dorena area. Dorena itself was a tiny settlement with just a few buildings, Choate said. The floodwaters broke through the levee just a few miles north of his grandparents' farm.

"When the levee broke," he recalled, "it got into the second floors of practically all the houses and barns. Back in those days levees were built with mules," he said.

The earthen levees were very narrow at the top. "They were nothing like the levees we have now," he said.

Workers almost had completed a new levee when a section of it gave way. "That was all fresh, soft dirt," he said. "They were still working on it."

The Southeast Missourian reported in its April 16, 1927, edition that 400 men had been working around the clock to shore up the levee.

The levee broke just before 4 a.m. that day, and within an hour the roaring river created a gap 300 yards wide, the newspaper said.

"Despite heroic efforts, the Dorena levee went out principally because of the recent rains which had saturated the entire embankment," the newspaper said.

The flood buried fences in sediment, Choate said.

Choate's current farm includes land that was once a lake. "When the levee broke in '27, sediment just filled it up," he said. "It just ruined it."

On April 18, the Southeast Missourian reported that the flood battle was being fought on an 82-mile front in Southeast Missouri.

On April 19, the newspaper reported that New Madrid residents were fleeing to safety.

"The town has been inundated for two weeks with 2 feet of water, most of this being seepage from the river, but the floodwater coming from the north will bring a serious condition," the newspaper said.

The Southeast Missourian's front page that day also carried a story about Illinois flood victims. It said the refugees came to Cape Girardeau by ferry.

"It was a touching scene. Their homes flooded, their crops ruined by water, their household effects and livestock abandoned in the water, they came here with the future dark and dreary -- but they were thankful that their lives had been spared," the newspaper said.

On April 21, the newspaper said water was 4 feet deep in New Madrid. Residents took shelter in the courthouse and school buildings.

The floodwaters in New Madrid began receding by April 23. But three days later water still covered much of the Bootheel.

SOME FACTS ON THE 1927 FLOOD

* The 1927 flood has been called this country's greatest natural disaster.

* The Mississippi River swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont combined.

* The flood left water as deep as 30 feet on land stretching from Illinois and Missouri southward to the Gulf of Mexico.

* Close to 1 million people in a nation of 120 million were forced out of their homes.

* Some estimates place the death toll in the thousands. The Red Cross fed nearly 700,000 refugees for months.

* Seventy years ago today, at Dorena, Mo., 1,200 feet of a government levee on the flood-swollen Mississippi River crumbled.

* In late April 1927, the river topped and broke through other levees, flooding New Madrid and other Bootheel towns.