7/26/93
By: Gil Stuenkel
Courier-Post Managing Editorr

Like most killers, the Mississippi River stalks its victims silently, and then snuffs them out in a burst of violence.

Ol' Man River found another victim Sunday. The Sny Island Drainage District Levee was among the last still holding back the floodwaters. Few people were sure why it held as long as it did, even though everyone recognized the stoic, almost superhuman effort of volunteers and National Guard troops. But even that effort wasn't enough, and maybe in the back of our minds, we knew it wouldn't be. But no one gave up.

Virtually everyone's life has been touched by the Great Flood of 1993, even those of us who are among the luckiest ‹ with jobs and dry homes to go to.

As the flood exacted its toll over the last few weeks, we all seemed to know how this was going to turn out, at the same time we hoped against hope and worked against the odds to change what proved to be the inevitable.

For us in Hannibal, most of us safe and dry, watching the river claim its latest conquest was like losing a member of the family. We felt it strike closer and closer to home as the river marched south, taking out levees as it went.

Then the nightmare of the West Quincy levee break, spectacular in its horror, etched indelible images on our minds. We were dumbstruck and numb as Marion County not only flooded, it burned. It was almost as if the river were telling us, I'm going to light this up so you all have to watch.

None of that was necessary Sunday.

Like most killers, the river strikes when you least expect it.

After weeks of rain, after all the warnings that nighttime was the most dangerous for keeping the levee intact, the river struck in the middle of the day under the brightest, hottest sun of the summer ‹ on a Sunday, the day of rest.

After people had cautiously begun to say and think that maybe the worst was over, just maybe there would be no more levees falling, the most powerful natural force on the planet told us otherwise.

As is usually the case, the bad news spread fast Sunday, and hundreds of Hannibalians were drawn to the high ground to watch as the latest phase of water torture began across the river.

At Riverview Park, police sealed off the entrance and turned cars away. But the park already was full of cars and people drawn to the overlooks. Police soon went through the park, ordering everyone out under threat of arrest. It wasn't overreacting; at the time no one knew just what the hours ahead would require, but police wanted the option of easy access to the park for emergency vehicles if necessary. Later in the afternoon, the park was reopened and people were drawn again to the overlooks with binoculars and cameras to get as close a look as was safe, and to record the tragedy ‹ as if we would need reminders in the future of July, 1993.

The same scene played out on Lovers' Leap, at the Lighthouse, along Cardiff Hill.

We stood, and watched, and said the same things we all said before: No, the river's never been this high before, not even in Œ73. They all worked so hard to save the levee. It's a tragedy. It's a shame. It'll take months and years to come back. Wonder when we'll ever have a bridge and roads open. Even as you look at it, you just can't imagine it.

We said those things knowing everyone had heard them before, knowing that they were redundant, trite, and inadequate. But you can't look at the devastation and say nothing.

For us on the Missouri side, most of us completely powerless to help, the only sound this disaster made was the muffled thumping of helicopters looking for survivors.

None of us will ever hear a helicopter again and think of anything else.

It's the residual sound a silent killer makes, just after choosing a victim.