FLOODING CAUSES PROBLEMS FOR MAIL DELIVERY IN AREA

Delivering mail in areas along the flood-ravaged Mississippi River is a tough task these days.

The relentless floodwaters have forced 38 post offices to relocate, but it hasn't canceled out the mail.

Flooding from the river-connected Diversion Channel has closed roads to Allenville, but the small town is still getting its mail.

Allenville resident Phil Thompson said the mail is being brought in by boat by another Allenville resident, who picks up the mail at Lemonds' Grocery on the south side of the Diversion Channel.

In Commerce, the tiny post office sits in a sea of floodwater. A temporary post office was set up at the Methodist church there on July 9, but was moved again because flooding was making the road to the church inaccessible, said Postmaster Joyce Sander.

The post office has been operating out of the Commerce Baptist Church since Tuesday. The church sits on high ground on the outskirts of the village.

"My contract driver brings the mail to my home and picks it up," said Sander, who has served as postmaster at Commerce for eight years. Prior to that, she worked for 25 years as a schoolteacher in the Cape Girardeau public schools.

Sander takes the mail from her home in Commerce, which is not flooded, to the Baptist church each day.

"I sort it and put a rubber band around it, and my customers come in and I hand it out to them," she said.

"We are giving the same mail service that we did before the flooding except for money orders," said Sander.

"I am selling stamps and doing a booming business," she added.

At Dutchtown, the post office sits only a short distance from a long sandbag levee that has been erected to hold back floodwaters from the Diversion Channel.

Postmaster Mary Amos lives in Allenville, but she can't get home except by boat; the roads to the small town are covered with water.

Amos has been staying with the former postmaster in Dutchtown since last Sunday. An Allenville neighbor has been taking care of her dog.

"I feel like I am fortunate that I still have a house and still have an office to work out of," she said.

Flooding has prevented the delivery of mail in some areas of Cape Girardeau. Residents have to go to the city's post office now to pick up their mail.

"You have to compensate for the water," said Matthew Peters, manager of customer service for the Cape Girardeau Post Office.

"The carrier brings it up to the window and they have it sorted," he explained. "Each individual's mail is tied up in a bundle."

In Illinois, floodwaters have cut off access to the Miller City Post Office in Alexander County.

Mary Lingle, who operates the small post office, has had to relocate to the nearby Olive Branch, Ill., Post Office. She said it could be weeks before the Miller City post office can reopen.

The flooding has prompted some people to leave their homes and curtailed mail delivery around Miller City, Ill.

For now, Lingle said, people are too busy fighting the flood to pick up their letters. "We just have to hold their mail."