Flood of 2011 anniversary: Levee breach day last year was preceded by weeks of wet weather

Editor's note: April 22, 2011, was the first day Southeast Missouri fell under a flood warning. What transpired in the following weeks marked one of the biggest flooding events of the past 100 years. This is the first in a series of stories about the flood of 2011.

When Carlin Bennett first got the sense that they might do it, they might actually do it, he went for a drive.

From Pinhook to Dorena, from Birds Point to Wolf Island, the newly elected Mississippi County presiding commissioner drove all across the massive floodway that in a matter of days would be, in spots, under 25 feet of water. Tractors and other farming equipment were being moved out. Belongings were being loaded. Windows were being boarded up.

It was a thought that inspired Bennett's drive. An obvious one, perhaps, but one that compelled him to go.

I have friends that live there.

These were his constituents, yes. But more than that. Bennett's childhood home sat in the floodway. Bennett was the son and grandson of farmers who worked the ground, just as generations upon generations of Mississippi County men had before them.

Bennett had gone to school with some of these folks. Attended church with them. Played sports with them.

And now, during his drive, Bennett stopped and talked to some of them.

"Whatever you've got, you need to get it out," he told them. "They're talking about activating this levee. If they do, it's going to be floods like you've never seen before."

Even as he said it, Bennett found it hard to believe. It had been more than six decades since the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway had been activated to alleviate floodwaters. That was the first time and it had never been done again. Until now, apparently.

Bennett himself with just a few months on the job. That time since November had been occupied largely dealing with a recount demand from his election opponent. In the first count, Bennett won by a scant seven votes. The second count padded that lead to 13. He was just settling into job when "this thing" happened.

A call from his emergency management director. Federal officials descending on his community. Scared residents. And eventually, on that wet night in May, explosives lighting up the night sky. The night everything changed.

All brought on by the Mississippi River, one that was their county's namesake. But how do you blame a river?

"The river doesn't have a mind or emotions," Bennett said. "It just does what it has to do."

After it was over, and it's not truly over yet, what was left behind was much worse than Bennett expected.

"Anything that happens from now on will be much less than I expected," he said. "Because I've seen what the worst is now."

And it began with the rain.

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To say no one expected significant flooding in April and May 2011 isn't true. How could someone -- a hydrologist, meteorologist, someone -- not have seen it coming? It turned out to be among the largest and most damaging recorded flooding along the river in the past century. In April, two major storm systems dumped record levels of rainfall in the upper river watershed. An early snow melt pressed the Missouri and Mississippi rivers up. Heavy rainfall drenched Southeast Missouri, Southern Illinois and western Kentucky.

Cape Girardeau saw the wettest spring in recorded history, as well. From March to May, nearly 32 inches of rainfall fell here -- 68 percent of what normally falls in a whole year. The sun seemed to disappear for days, even weeks, at a time.

Mary Lamm and Bob Holmes were watching. Lamm is a hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Paducah, Ky. Holmes is the U.S. Geological Survey's national flood hazard coordinator. Both knew 2011 was going to produce troubling floods, though after the waters fell they acknowledged they didn't even suspect how right they would turn out to be.

Holmes works in Rolla, Mo., but he has roots in Southern Illinois, growing up in Harrisburg, Ill. He still remembers his grandparents talking about the flood of 1937 -- the one where the Birds Point levees were first activated -- and how devastating they were.

Holmes began looking at flood outlooks for 2011 in November the year before. He saw snow piling up in the plains and he knew when it melted, it would create a significant chance of flooding.

"It's one thing to say we have a chance of flooding," he said. "It's another to see what we got."

Torrential rains fell. And fell. It didn't rain everywhere every day. But in 2011, according to the weather service, some part of Southeast Missouri -- from Perryville to Cooter -- saw some measure of rain from April 1 until May 2, the day of the Birds Point levee breach. Some days saw as much as 5 inches fall. That caused the Mississippi and Ohio rivers and their tributaries to begin to swell to record levels by the beginning of May. From April 14 to 16, the storm system that spawned one of the largest tornado outbreaks in U.S. history also produced large amounts of rainfall across the southern and Midwestern parts of the country.

By late April, residents in Delta, Chaffee, Gordonville and Whitewater were sandbagging to keep water out of their homes. At about the same time, emergency workers in Poplar Bluff were hoping the levee holding back the Black River would survive yet another downpour.

"We knew we were going to be in trouble," Lamm said. "But we didn't know how much. You don't expect to see the corps blow the levee. You don't expect to see whole towns give up a floodfight because they're not winning. So did we expect flooding? Yes. Did what happen surpass what we expected? Absolutely."

And still the rains fell.

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As the waters rose near the Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway, which is cradled by the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, Clay Shelby was becoming increasingly nervous.

"Scared to death," he said nearly a year later. "Still am."

And as the waters rose, Shelby was watching the weather reports with growing fear. He even brushed up on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers operational plan of activation. If they activated it, which requires using explosives to blow a large hole in the levee, it would send massive amounts of water across the 800 acres he has farmed in the floodway for 35 years.

Like many other farmers who owned, managed or worked in farms in the 130,000-acre floodway, Shelby had a lot to lose. He has a family that rely on him to provide. Not only that, there's the farm employees and their families to think about. Not to mention the agricultural businesses situated outside the floodway that count on business from the floodway farmers.

"Money turns around in the community," Shelby said. "This is half the county. If we were to lose production for a year? We're already not doing that well. That would have been a big hit."

As the calendar prepared to be flipped from April to May, Shelby had also noticed his neighbors becoming more anxious.

"There was a lot of angst," he said. "There's just so much politics involved in anything like this. It's still ongoing."

They worried about what such a massive flood would do. How much silt damage would there be? Ditches would be clogged, no doubt. The roads would likely be maimed. Many felt helpless.

A running narrative among floodway farmers in April 2011, one that exists today, was that the corps was going to blow the levee just to see how it worked. They whisper even today that that's why it was done at night, under cover of darkness, so that fewer people would know it was happening.

Shelby didn't subscribe to that theory. Not even then.

"They have a plan and they were going to follow that plan," Shelby said. "They told us that they had orders and they were going to carry out those orders unless they got different ones."

So, in the days before the breach, Shelby watched the skies, scanned the weather reports and worried.

And still the rains fell.

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Bennett held out hope that the corps would not have to do it. He knew some in Mississippi County thought if the rain stopped there, they'd be OK. Bennett knew that wasn't true. He was watching weather reports near the Ohio Valley and into Tennessee and Alabama. He knew if it was raining in Indianapolis. All of that water eventually made its way into either the Mississippi or the Ohio, which brought it right to their doorstep.

"Having a nice pretty day here in Mississippi County didn't really matter," he said. "It was the perfect storm. It really was."

If they did it, Bennett worried what it would do to his community as a whole. He pointed to the front page of one of the two local newspapers he owns. It was from the 1950 flood. The floodway wasn't activated by the corps. No explosives were used. But the floodway was flooded nonetheless.

The headline reads, "Spillway evacuated," and the article goes on to say that 770 families that contained 2,370 people moved out. That's how many people used to live in the floodway. Not all returned. In April 2011, about 50 families lived in the floodway.

"These series of floods have gradually driven people away," Bennett said.

If the corps blows the levee, what would that do? How many would come back, if any? Bennett wondered.

In the meantime, he was watching the weather reports. Trying to calm his friends and neighbors. And waiting.

And still the rains fell.

smoyers@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

East Prairie, Mo.

Birds Point, Mo.

Birds Point-New Madrid Floodway