RED STAR: NORTH SIDE HOUSES BECOME ISLANDS AS MISSISSIPPI RISES

Along with the "No Trespassing" signs plastered on a deserted and sandbagged house at 1008 N. Spanish Street is another in the yard that drolly reads: "River Front Property For Sale."

The Mississippi River already is in the back yard. As sure as the river is rising, this house will join others in the Red Star District that have become islands.

While some residents in the area determinedly sandbagged their houses and businesses Friday afternoon, others were packing up their belongings or viewing the encroaching water from their porches with an air of que sera sera.

Some streets along Sloan's Creek already are inundated, including low-lying parts of Second, Third, Spanish, Main and Water streets. Despite warnings that the standing water can carry diseases, some children were splashing through the streets on foot and bicycles.

Some residents are veterans of the devastating 1973 flood that forced many people in the district and in South Cape Girardeau out of their homes for more than a month. But that doesn't seem to make it any easier.

Seventy-nine-year-old Ersay Knapp and her husband Howard moved into their house on North Main Street in 1967. In the 1973 flood, which crested at 45.6 feet, a foot of water covered their floor.

They spent about a month at a daughter's house, and had to replace their floor.

The Knapps' plans this time are open-ended.

"We're going to get out," she said. "But we haven't decided what we're going to do."

Having been through this once before is no reassurance, she said.

"I got pretty excited over this one. I'm a lot older and not in as good health as I was back then."

North Main Street resident Diane Ray and her husband Albert also hadn't yet made any plans about what to do when the water rises even further. She said the family has moved a few things to a relative's house.

They also seeded their yard with a concoction of sulfur and mothballs that's supposed to keep snakes away. Snakes and rats become flood refugees as well.

"My husband killed a copperhead here three weeks ago," she said.

The water is more of a threat on the eastern side of the street. David and Carolyn Whitmore and their daughter Ashley had just finished a day of moving belongings into the second floor of their rented house. Carolyn took the day off from work.

They would be spending the night at her sister's house.

David said their landlord bought flood insurance only Thursday and was told it will be good unless the water touches their yard by Tuesday.

Water already was riding high on a number of abandoned houses closest to the river on Third Street. Lawrence Russell and Shirley Wink were leaving theirs behind and moving into an apartment they've rented for a month.

Many businesses in the area already have put this one in the loss column. Workers at Blattner Engineering Inc. have been transferring supplies needed for current jobs and other equipment to another location since Tuesday.

"We're moving out," said Phillip Fluchel, who was loading structural steel beams onto a low-boy trailer.

If the river reaches its predicted 47-foot crest, 3 of those feet will be in the shop at 1300 N. Water.

Fluchel, the company's head fabricator, said it will continue operating at the new quarters it will share with General Machine and Supply on Rust Street.

"The shop has so many things to do we can't afford to shut down," Fluchel said.

LeGrand's Garage at Fourth and Water streets is half-surrounded by a wall of sandbags three high and two wide. The business, a partnership of three brothers, weathered the flood of '73 by employing the same technique and moving things off the floor.

Tom LeGrand predicted it will once more. "It's like the old story again. We'll lose probably a week's business."

Raymond Smith's RS Neon at the corner of Third and Main streets seemed in the most precarious situation because of the flooding.

A U-Haul truck was pulled up to the shop behind Smith's house. On Friday, his mother Donna was helping him move items from the house to her house across town. Saturday they faced moving the thousands of fragile glass tubes and equipment.

Smith has flood insurance on the house but couldn't get it for the shop. The latter contains thousands of dollars worth of glass tubing, and is outfitted with specialized gas piping that fuels the burners used to make the signs.

She is concerned that items belonging to a scrap-metal dealer who lives next door will begin floating around in the flood and break the gas lines that run to the shop.

Gas lines in the most-threatened houses already have been turned off.

Smith predicted that the flood will devastate her son's business no matter what happens. "He's got a business that's closed down. It probably will be for at least a month, maybe more."

Across the street at the Burch Foods warehouse, a vending machine concern, workman John Boos was shoring up the building with plywood, plastic and sand.

Boos was building bulkheads at the doors and windows to keep logs from crashing through. He hopes to stop the water, but only up to a certain level. "If it gets high enough you have to let it come in," Boos said. "It would explode the building otherwise."

The building is made of concrete block. "It will survive if (the water) doesn't get in the roof members," Boos said. Fortunately, the building's heater is suspended from the ceiling.

Jackie Huey's house at 1110 N. Spanish is still a block away from the water to the south and east, but she's putting up a barricade of sandbags. A work crew of volunteers from the Bethel Assembly of God Church spent most of Friday shoveling sand into bags in Huey's back yard.

Friday afternoon, most of them were taking a break and only her son Tim and friend Tony Hammack were toiling.

A friend of Tim's helped out by delivering four dump truck-loads of sand 70,000 pounds worth. The sandbag wall is three high and three wide in most places, and will be six bags high in the rear. They planned to work on it into the night.

Tim, who's spearheading the operation, also has acquired a plastic barrier and some big transfer pumps to expel the overflow.

Huey's house is the only one in the block where such precautions were being taken. "That's because they're renters and they don't know what the river can do," Tim said.

Huey had recently moved into the house when the record-breaking flood of '73 lapped at her back yard. "They were fishing off the back porch," she said.

She said she's most concerned about the numerous elderly people and widows in the neighborhood.

"We just do what we can and pray about it," she said.

Everyone is talking about Friday's expected crest of 47 feet, praying for less and instead of more.

At work on the foundation of the Burch Foods warehouse, Boos said, "I feel sorry for those people. They've got a heck of a mess to look forward to."