OFFICIALS TRY TO STALL A RELENTLESS RUMOR MILL

Flood water that has meandered into our area this summer has done more than find a place throughout residential areas and atop productive land. It has also lodged itself in our collective psyches, weighing as heavily on our minds as it does on some levees. The barren (and occasionally reckless) off-shoot of this is rumors that consume the time of officials and startle the population. The flood is bad enough; the flood of hearsay compounds the problem.

The talk going around ranges from the nearly rational to the ridiculous. Word circulated that a hog trough had disappeared into a sandboil. Other discussion had the municipal water supply being polluted by toxins carried downstream with the flood. Someone believed they saw a pillar shift on the Mississippi River bridge. Persons on both sides of the Mississippi reported to authorities scuttlebutt that a man with property on one bank of the river was trying to sabotage the opposite shore, hoping to save his own land.

Don't spend much time looking for truth in these incidents. The Cape Girardeau water system is fine. The Diversion Channel levee, subject of many rumors of failure, is built to an enormously high standard because of its substantial purpose ... and it remains sound. The downtown floodwall and levee system, equally strong, also remains effective at the task for which it was erected.

Throughout this ordeal, government and disaster-relief officials who have worked with this flood have been extremely forthcoming in providing information, remarkable considering their pressing workload and the time it takes to check and dispel rumors. They have recognized a critical part of emergency work: informed citizens deport themselves better than frantic citizens in a crisis situation. It is for this reason that Southern Illinois officials set up a flood information center that serves as a clearinghouse for rumors. Officials would rather hear them early and expel them with haste.

Nature's remarkable power touches in all of us a degree of awe, and the incompre~hen~sible forces at work in floods (and tornadoes, hurricanes and earthquakes, for that matter) defy understanding even when some facts are available. It isn't unusual that rumors would blossom in such a climate ... but that doesn't make them any more productive. At this newspaper, we will continue to strive to disseminate information that is factual and useful, neither sensationalizing nor sugar-coating our reports. We likewise commend those officials who patiently try to contain the rumor mill's relentless turns.