Remembering the flood of '93

Laverne Smith

Laverne Smith remembers well the deluge of summer rains north of Cape Girardeau in 1993.

She remembers the ever-rising waters of the Mississippi River, the crushed levies, and then, when the water finally receded, the mud that caked many buildings in the area.

The rampant river forced Smith's mother, two brothers and daughter to evacuate their homes in East Cape Girardeau, Ill., and Dutchtown.

At the time, the 50-year-old Smith worked as an administrative assistant at Central High School.

"When you live in Southeast Missouri, you just expect to get flooded," said Smith, who lives in Cape Girardeau. "People here aren't scared of that because it's almost a yearly thing."

Only after watching several major levies break on television, and seeing the destruction that followed, did Smith become fearful of the situation.

"It was like Moses parting the Red Sea," she said. "It was pure violence. Nothing in the world could have stopped that water when the levies broke."

Alongside family and friends, Smith worked around the clock for several days filling sandbags to protect her daughter's home on Highway 74 in Dutchtown from the encroaching flood waters.

Hundreds of sand bags formed a barricade reaching the roof of the three-story home. In the end, it was the only house along that stretch of Highway 74 to withstand the Mississippi.

Ten years later, the middle finger on Smith's right hand is still crippled from tying those sandbags.

"As bad as it was, I've never seen such a force of togetherness in the community," Smith said. "It was something we all just did because it wasn't going to beat us."

Pierce and Meg Yates

Just 8-years-old when the Mississippi River crested at 49 feet on August 8, 1993, Pierce Yate's clearest memory of the flooding is that of people fishing in water-covered fields near his home.

Although the Yates' home wasn't affected, neighboring houses were flooded. Highway 177, which led to their home on Rolling Hills Drive in rural Cape Girardeau County, was also covered in river water.

Instead of the usual 15 minute trip, the Yates had to drive 45 minutes on back roads to reach Cape Girardeau.

Pierce and his sister Meg, who was just 6-years-old at the time, took an alternate bus route to reach Nell Holcomb School, where they were entering second and first grade that August.

"I do remember kids had a hard time to getting to school," said Pierce, now an 18-year-old senior at Central High School.

Meg, now 16 and a junior, recalls watching scraps of wood floating in the pooled flood water and helping fill sandbags at a family friend's home.

"I just remember how long it took to get home, and how dirty the water was," she said.

Jim Watkins

When the Mississippi River abandoned its banks and flooded numerous homes in Cape Girardeau in August of 1993, local schools were among the most impacted by the devastation.

"The water covered so much area, it still amazes me," said Jim Watkins, who was principal at Franklin Elementary at the time. "Without the flood wall, where would the water have been? It would have wiped out the whole downtown."

Although Franklin wasn't directly impacted by the 1993 flooding, Watkins said around 50 families from Washington and May Greene elementary schools were displaced because of the excess water.

"They found shelter with neighbors and friends all over the city," said Watkins. "There was a lot of stress for those families. Things were just not normal."

Students whose homes were surrounded by water traveled by boat to an alternate bus stop to travel to school. Schools made counselors available to students who were affected by the disaster.

"The children handled it pretty well," Watkins said. "Kids are resilient, and can accept change better than adults sometimes."

High school and junior high students were dismissed from school to help build sandbag levies in Dutchtown.

Schools held food, toy and clothes drives for families who lost possessions in the flood, and collected money for the Red Cross.

"The town really pulled together. I think that's what made the flood bearable," Watkins said.

John Mehner

John Mehner had just been named the new president and CEO of the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce when the river crested 10 years ago today.

"What's real clear in my memory is, because of the national news and national press, so many people thought Cape Girardeau was completely under water," Mehner said. "I would get calls, the university would get calls."

The questions went along these lines: Can we come there? Can we still shop? Can my children get to classes on campus?

"People had no idea, because of our flood wall, how protected we were," he said. "They thought every town along the Mississippi was under water."

Along with countless others, Mehner spent some time sandbagging at Third Street Methodist Church and he watched as the church went completely under water.

"We ended up losing that one," he said.

He remembers, most of all, watching as people fought to keep water out of their homes. It was a battle many people lost.

"It had to be frustrating for those people," he said. "It seemed like every day, somebody lost a house or a farm."

He remembers being thankful that the flood wall was there.

"It makes me think today how lucky we are to have it," he said. "For everyone who says it blocks the view of the river, what it was a savior. From a business standpoint, it was a multimillion-dollar savior."

Martha Vandivort

The weight of the Mississippi River was on their shoulders, but there were plenty of shoulders to go around.

The Cape Girardeau County emergency operations department, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Guard -- they all battled and battled and battled. For three months, they piled sandbags, secured levies and came to the aid of people trapped in their homes. At Neely's Landing, the coast guard used boats to check on a pair of elderly sisters whose home was surrounded by water.

But what Martha Vandivort remembers most about 1993 is how long everybody fought and how everybody came together to help.

Vandivort was a deputy coordinator with the county's emergency operations department that summer. She helped coordinate all the different organizations who came to help and there were a lot of them.

"We held a meeting every day to coordinate the efforts," she said. "We were taxed to the limit and so other neighboring emergency management offices would come in to help. I remember all the support that was given by Gene Huckstep and the county commission. Gene was very active, at all the meetings. He begged and pleaded with the state to get what we needed."

The late Brian Miller was the emergency coordinator back then and he was also in the middle of getting a 911 system organized at the same time that the Mississippi put many southeast Missouri towns in peril.

Much attention was given to the Dutchtown area -- the town was protected by sandbag walls. But those who really knew what was going on knew there was more at stake than Dutchtown.

"It was never made public, and for very good reason, but because the duration of the flood, the levies were about the consistency of chocolate pudding," Vandivort said. "Everybody was wondering, 'If the Diversion Channel levy breaks, what would happen to Chaffee? What would happen to Delta? This flood water could go all the way to Sikeston.'"

Knowing levies could break at any time put a heavy burden on everyone. As a result even the most mild-mannered people would lose their tempers.

"The flood seemed to go on forever," Vandivort said.

Ronnie Fischer

Ronnie Fischer, then-city manager of Cape Girardeau, was a busy man in the summer of 1993.

"Being the city manager, I had the responsibility of all the areas in Cape prone to flooding," Fischer said.

That meant the Red Star area, the south Sprigg area, the water plant and the wastewater treatment plant.

The city of Cape Girardeau had diesel water pumps at various locations to protect the quality of water for its residents. It would have been a twist of irony if the Great Flood of 1993 would have left the city without drinking water, but Fischer and others worked feverishly to make sure that didn't happen.

"We knew the water was there and there was nothing we could do about it," Fischer said. "We just tried to protect what we could."

One issue after another would pop up. Fischer held meetings every morning to tackle the newest problem. But he had help from all around.

"The main thing was that everyone was willing to work," he said. "I remember people who didn't even live in Cape coming down to Red Star to help fill sand bags."

Ronnie Smith

Ronnie Smith talks like a war veteran when he speaks of his involvement with the Great Flood of 1993.

"I fought the Mississippi River," he says proudly.

Smith was a geotech advisor for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during the flood. His job was to monitor the soil and come up with temporary fixes to stave off the river.

He would help fix "sand boils," a problem that occurred when the ground becomes saturated, water seeps below the 15 feet or so of clay, then hits an aquifer, which is usually a layer of sand. If the pressure is high enough, the water pushes the sand up through the clay layer and starts pumping sand out of the ground.

Smith, who lives in Arkansas but spent seven weeks that summer living in Cape Girardeau, said the thing that stands out in his mind is the fear of the people.

"They had been watching all of the levies failing up north and there was definite excitement," he said. "And there was definite cooperation. They were willing to do whatever it took. There was great cooperation between the local effort and the corps."

Smith said the levies around Cape Girardeau were built for 100- to 500-year floods, as opposed to the 50-year levies that were breaking to the north.

"We were in a lot better shape," Smith said. "Ours were higher and bigger. It was not as critical down south."

Kent Zickfield

Kent Zickfield remembers coming to work to the business he owns downtown and seeing that he literally had to look up to see the barges.

"It was one of the things that got to me the most," said the owner of Zickfield's Jewelers. "When I drove down the hill towards downtown, I was lower than the barge. That gave me a bit of a start."

Zickfield, who also is the president of the Downtown Merchants Association, said downtown businesses also sang praises about the flood wall.

"Our business would not exist without the wall," he said. "There for awhile, it was hitting flood stage on a fairly regular basis. The wall is here for a purpose, to make the business district a viable place. If it hadn't been for that flood wall, a lot of those businesses would have pulled out and bulldozed it all down."

Zickfield also remembers that people were afraid to come downtown, especially after the wall developed a leak.

"They were worried about the wall breaking down," he said. "That never entered my mind. We all say thank you to that wall every day."

Elmer Trapp

A ringing telephone would wake Elmer Trapp at 6 a.m. and the calls never seemed to stop during that fateful summer 10 years ago.

Trapp, now retired, was head of the Salvation Army in Cape Girardeau when the mighty Mississippi showed its strength to Southeast Missouri and the nation.

Now, looking back, the summer seemed to last forever, he said. "It was like the river crested 14,000 times."

The telephone would ring at all hours of the day and night with calls from people needing help, he said.

"We were telling people that the water was going to come and ruin some of their stuff and they would have to work through this," Trapp said. "Perhaps it was also growing a experience for myself in dealing with people knowing that disaster faced them."

But the relief efforts were community-wide, he said. Volunteers came from everywhere offering to help.

"As a Salvation Army officer, I never felt more rewarded in my whole career because we were really serving people."

But it was also a trying time because so many people offered monetary donations, Trapp said. "The generosity of people was so overwhelming. The money just poured in."

Patricia Krueger

Even though she didn't live near the rising waters of the Mississippi River, Patricia Krueger felt its devastation.

She and her husband, Richard, both members of Bethany Baptist Church, helped with the sandbagging efforts in the Red Star district during the flood.

The couple also helped move people and their belongings out of homes as the waters rose.

"The water came up a foot in the time we were carrying things out," she said.

The acrid smell of the muddy water is a scent she's not likely to forget, Krueger said.

And she was surprised to see how many people were displaced during the floods. "And since then there are a number of homes that are no longer here because Red Star is in the floodplain."

And while the power and might of the river impressed her, so did the generosity of the community. "The people just gave of their time and energy without expecting to get paid, which is something we should do all the time."

Jim Grebing

Jim Grebing was a reporter in Cape Girardeau for 20 years and reported on the flood in 1993, including a few visits to Dutchtown.

"Everything was focused on Dutchtown," said Grebing, who is now a spokesman with the Department of Economic Development. "It was really a symbol of what fighting this flood was all about. That was quite a dramatic story."

Once, during that summer of 1993, he and other members of the media flew in a helicopter over the flooded areas with then-Gov. Mel Carnahan.

"Governor Carnahan was just overwhelmed at the devastation," Grebing said. "I think he was truly moved by the spirit of the community of Dutchtown as they were fighting this big, bad river. He found it to be a moving experience."

Grebing himself was amazed at the size of the sandbag levies and the number of people who were working there. As he interviewed volunteers, he learned that some of them were from other parts of the country, who had taken time off work to come help.

"People young and old came to help out," he said. "It was inspiring, a good feeling. People came together and fought to help their neighbors out. The term neighbor became pretty broad that summer."

Mike Parry

For about six weeks during the flood of '93, the congregation at Red Star Baptist Church had to move west to get out of the water's way, recalled the Rev. Mike Parry, who was interim pastor at the time.

At one point the water levels rose so high the congregation couldn't use its plumbing, which meant no bathrooms and no drinking water. So the Cape Girardeau Baptist Association loaned them space in a church on Bloomfield Road.

But plenty of action happened in the Red Star parking lot. It was the site where sand piles got dumped for sandbagging.

'I'll never forget a joint service we had with Bethany on the parking lot and afterwards everybody did sandbagging," Parry said. "Neighbors were helping neighbors."

But total strangers also offered help. A truck filled with food showed up from Oklahoma to be distributed within the neighborhood. "We were able to give out food to people in the area and it actually birthed the food pantry and that's now ongoing for the church."

In some ways, the devastation of the flood helped to reshape the church's ministry and how the community viewed the congregation, Parry said.

-- By Southeast Missourian staff writers