LEVEE UNDER REPAIR BREAKS AT MILLER CITY

MILLER CITY, Ill. -- John Kiefer couldn't tell you what went wrong with his levee Thursday.

Kiefer is the project superintendent of the emergency repairs to the Len Small levee near Miller City. The levee was breached during last year's record flood, and construction crews had worked around the clock this week to complete the repairs.

But at 10 p.m. Wednesday, the levee once again gave way to the rising Mississippi River. By Thursday afternoon, a 1,200-foot gash in the southernmost part of the levee had forced many area residents to flee their homes seeking higher ground.

At about 3:30 p.m., floodwaters flowed into Horseshoe Lake and were swiftly encroaching on Olive Branch, Ill.

"I just don't understand what happened," said Kiefer. "That was by far the strongest part of the levee."

Luhr Brothers, a Columbia, Ill. contractor, has been working on the levee since January. When it broke Wednesday, Kiefer said the company estimated the strength of the levee at about 92 percent.

"We had been working around the clock since Monday," said Kiefer. "We just have no clue what caused the break.

"It almost makes us expect foul play, which would be virtually impossible," he added. "No one has the kind of equipment it would take to damage the levee to cause this kind of breach."

Where the levee broke, Kiefer said it was 30 feet high and 90 feet across at its base. The levee had a core of non-porous rock, covered and reinforced by several feet of sand.

"Last night at 8 p.m. when we shut down for the day, there wasn't any pressure on the sand at all," said Kiefer. "It just doesn't make any sense."

Kiefer said there could be two reasons for the levee giving way to the rising river. First, the structure of the levee could have given way underneath and washed all the sand out, or the rock base could have been more porous than engineers assumed.

"It could have been anything, I just don't know," he said. "We're just baffled by it. We don't know how in the world this happened."

Luhr Brothers was under contract to repair a portion of the 17-mile levee along the Mississippi River, which broke in mid-July allowing floodwaters to cover more than 30,000 acres of farm land.

The $2.4 million project was scheduled to be completed March 30, but was running behind due to harsh weather conditions since January.

After the break, Kiefer said workers spent a majority of the night moving Luhr Brothers equipment to higher ground.

By daylight, the scour hole that developed on the south side of the breach was so vast, Kiefer has little hope of ever repairing the damaged leg of the levee.

"It's supposed to rain this weekend," said Kiefer. "I guess that means we'll just wait till the water recedes."

As Luhr Brothers and area residents were pulling out, officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Illinois Department of Transportation, the American Red Cross, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and other relief agencies got down to business.

Thursday afternoon, a team of state officials were taking measurements in areas already inundated and on dry land, to determine where the water will be when the river crests.

"We're trying to establish some baselines today through surveys," said John Zimmerman of the Corps of Engineers. "We also have to figure out how fast the water is rising. Then we can give these people some concrete answers about the situation.

"We just don't want to jump to any conclusions or incite panic among area residents," he said.

The three were standing at the spillway into Horseshoe Lake Thursday afternoon. The flood gates to the lake were wide open, but the sheer volume of water far exceeded the gates' capacity. Floodwaters were flowing over the road, around the gates and into the lake.

"This whole road (Promise Land Road) will be under water by sundown," said Ron Eastwood of the Illinois Department of Transportation. "We're hoping it doesn't reach Highway 3 before the river crests."

At 4 p.m. Thursday, the Mississippi River at Cape Girardeau was 38.52 feet. It was forecast to rise to 40.8 feet today, crest at 42.5 feet on Saturday and remain at that level Sunday.

The weather service said any significant rainfall within the next two days in Central Missouri and Illinois could alter the predictions.

In reaction to rising floodwaters, the U.S. Coast Guard in Paducah, Ky. activated Thursday a natural disaster response plan, ready to aid state and federal agencies working with the flood.

Earlier Thursday, just a short distance down Promise Land Road from where state officials were trying to assess the situation, Daniel Bigham sat in his pickup truck watching the water wash over the road.

"I went through this way this morning and there was no water at all," said Bigham. "All this water is headed straight toward my house."

Bigham, a firefighter with the Horseshoe Lake Volunteer Fire Department, said he and other firefighters were called out shortly after midnight Thursday to aid families evacuating the area and to keep people from driving over flooded roadways.

"We all went home about 8 a.m. after most of the people were out," said Bigham. "I just woke up a little while ago and wanted to see what's happening. I guess this answered my question."

Bigham said he attended a local informational meeting early Thursday but learned little about the situation.

"The Corps and the Illinois Department of Transportation couldn't tell us what's going on," he said. "I wish someone could tell us what the river is going to do. Then we all would know if we should pack our bags or just wait it out."