Flooded river taking aim at Mississippi Delta

RENA LARA, Miss. — Crews worked to shore up levees along the swelling Mississippi River on Wednesday as floodwaters threatened to swamp even more of the fertile Mississippi Delta.

The crest rolled south after hitting the high mark Tuesday in Memphis, Tenn., just inches short of the record set in 1937. Some low-lying neighborhoods were inundated, but high levees protected much of the rest of the city. Landmarks such as Graceland stayed dry.

Family members of Hazel Moxley, not pictured, make sandbags to fortify her home in preparation of impending flooding from the likely diversion of Mississippi River floodwaters into the Atchafalaya Basin, in Stephensville, La., Tuesday.

In Rena Lara, Miss., an unincorporated town of about 500 where dump trucks have been hauling gravel from dawn to dusk to shore up the levee, people were uneasy Wednesday. They have no local newspaper or TV stations, so they have been relying on social networking sites and word of mouth for information. Public officials are trying to assure them that they expect the levee to hold and will give them plenty of notice if they need to leave.

"It's getting scary," said Rena Harris, 43, a homemaker who lives in the shadow of the levee. "They won't let you go up there to look at the water."

Downstream in Louisiana, inmates filled sandbags to protect property in Cajun swamp communities that could be flooded if engineers open a spillway to protect the more densely populated Baton Rouge area. Fear was high among residents there.

And in Vicksburg, Miss., the site of a pivotal Civil War battle, William Jefferson was already paddling slowly down his street in a small boat, past his house and around his church. The river is not expected to crest until next May 19.

"Half my life is still in there," he said, pointing to the small white house swamped by several feet of water. "I hate to see it when I go back in."

Jefferson refuses to leave his hard-hit neighborhood, so he spends his days in the sweltering sun watching the water rise and sleeping in a camper at an intersection that's likely to flood soon, too.

"If you don't stay with your stuff, you won't have it," he said. "This is what I do every day. Just watch the water."

Over the past week or so in the Delta, floodwaters along the rain-swollen river and its backed-up tributaries have already washed away crops, forced many to seek higher ground and closed some of the dockside casinos that are vital to the state's economy.

The state gambling industry is taking a hit: All 19 casinos along the river will be shut down by the end of the week, costing governments $12 million to $13 million in taxes per month, authorities said. That will put some 13,000 employees temporarily out of work.

But the worst is yet to come, with the crest expected over the next few days. The damage in Memphis was estimated at more than $320 million as the serious flooding began, and an official tally won't be available until the waters recede.

The flooded home of William Jefferson is shown Tuesda in Vicksburg, Miss. Jefferson said the water started coming into his house a few days ago. Over the past week or so in the Delta, floodwaters along the rain-swollen river and its backed-up tributaries have already washed away crops, forced many people to flee to higher ground and closed some of the dockside casinos that are vital to the state's economy. But the worst is yet to come, with the crest expected to roll through the Delta over the next few days.

To the south, there were no early figures on the devastation, but with hundreds of homes already damaged, "we're going to have a lot more when the water gets to where it's never been before," said Greg Flynn, a spokesman for the Mississippi emergency management agency.

Across the region, federal officials anxiously checked and reinforced the levees, some of which could be put to their biggest test ever.

In northwestern Mississippi, crews have been using dirt and sand to make a levee higher at the Bolivar-Coahoma county line in the north Delta, said Charlie Tindall, attorney for the Mississippi Levee Board.

About 10 miles north of Vicksburg, contractors lined one side of what is known as a backwater levee with big sheets of plastic to keep it from eroding if floodwaters flow over it as feared — something that has never happened since the levee was built in the 1970s.

Jimmy Mitchell, 46, and his wife and two children have been living in a loaned camper for more than week at a civic arena in Tunica.

"There's no sewage hookup. You go in a barn to take a shower," said Mitchell, who is from the small community of Cutoff. "We have no time frame on how long we can stay."

Widespread flooding was expected along the Yazoo River, a tributary that is backed up because of the bloated Mississippi. Rolling Fork, home of the bluesman Muddy Waters, was also in danger of getting inundated.

Farmers built homemade levees to protect their corn, cotton, wheat and soybean crops, but many believed the crops would be lost entirely.