8/2/93
By: Susan Denkler
Courier-Post Staff Writer

They came and they conquered.

Small in numbers, they were but a handful of stalwart pioneers who in the 1800s poled their flatboats northward and ‹ landing them in the shadows of the bluffs along this mighty river ‹ stood awestruck while platting their futures.

Mankind then was a combination of swaggering self-confidence and dwarfed dependence. In good times, they dominated the waters: Fishing them, navigating their meandering paths, building in sight of their churning streams and channeling their flow for power and prosperity.

But the settlers knew their hearty spirits were no match for the unruly waters when rushing full-strength. They'd heard and shared fearful stories of seasons when, after deep winter snows and generous spring rains, the river the Indians called "Father of Waters" would tear loose from its banks in a fit of fury and wash tiny settlers of their kind away.

In a terrifying turnabout, the conquering then became the conquered, bested by the swollen and punishing floodwaters that took crops and homes and lives as they pleased.

Nearly 200 years later, in 1993, and the conquering rivers are plundering again, this time taking modern settlements for a spoil.

Little Alexandria, population 417, was one of the first the rivers reclaimed. Yesteryear's campfire tales have become today's coffeeshop stories ‹ no less frightening ‹ about how the Fox River Levee broke one day and washed over the Northeast Missouri town.

The next day, it was another story. And another. And another.

The Mississippi and neighboring rivers and tributaries, who for centuries carved out the configuration of the land, are doing it again ‹ this time plowing fresh furrows into domains previously protected and considered safe.

Croplands and communities, businesses and industries, roads and bridges are taken out in their wake. Dozens of lives have been claimed so far and countless others put on hold as an entire region of the country mobilizes to fight a common enemy.

No one has stopped long enough to count the full cost. The figures would be too high.

Snapshots of humanity
South Side and the Bear Creek flood plain have come to personify the disaster in Hannibal, giving a human face to the terrible tragedy our town and its sister cities so far have endured.

The waters swelled into South Main Street neighborhoods with a vengeance, not once, but two times this year. Robbing territory for months on end, the waters resolutely claimed property after property, a foot or two at a time.

At first, residents were dazed, pacing the sidewalks and talking over their back fences to neighbors, trying to sort out what to do.

Soon the trucks began moving in and somber-faced families and friends unloaded homes of their possessions. Boats were pressed into service as owners ferried out belongings from already-drenched dwellings.

Some have gone to live with family members. Some are digging in and staying despite the rising waters, despite the murky stench and threat of disease ‹ bound to hold onto their properties. Others, with no place to call home, are seeking out temporary bed and board at the American Red Cross Shelter set up in the old Hannibal Regional Hospital building at 109 Virginia St.

Feeding stations have opened all over the region.

The Salvation Army, with Corps offices at 200 Ninth St., has called in several canteens to provide a "meals on wheels" program. Navigating their RV-sized vehicles in and out of tight places, volunteers managed to get hot food and cold drinks to the sweat-drenched sandbaggers trying to save farms, homes and businesses.

Likewise, the Red Cross is manning ERVs (Emergency Response Vehicles), taking food to stranded residents and volunteer workers at various points of need.

A Baptist relief team from North Carolina arrived July 22 and set up on the campus of Hannibal-LaGrange College; countless unnamed others have sent or prepared meals on-site in amazing acts of kindness. Thousands of meals a day delivered by hundreds of hands have brought a quiet murmur of "thanks" from those who have little time to say more.

Small victories, big defeats
For endless weeks, the work has been feverish on levees constructed to hold back the unimaginable, rising waters. As soon as a "hot spot" would be pinpointed, a call would go out for workers, and truckloads of volunteers would respond, bags and spades in hand.

Armies of individuals ‹ dispatched in concert or one at a time ‹ have moved literal mountains of sand, clay and rock to shore up levees that weren't high enough or strong enough. South River, Sny Island, Lima Lakes and Indian Grave ‹ terms once unfamiliar ‹ became widely spoken in street conversation as residents worried about "boils" and "breaches."

Uniformed National Guardsmen have become commonplace as they man barricades, assist the sandbagging efforts and carry out patrols. Buses and trolleys have shuttled resident volunteers from Hannibal Public School parking lots to areas such as South River Drainage District, where despite days and days of backbreaking work, the levee caved in July 13, dousing thousands of acres of croplands and homes, and making an island out of the huge American Cyanamid agriculture chemicals plant.

"We won a lot of battles but we lost the war," a distraught Roy Woods said as he stood near his flooded Bay De Charles house, after the break. The man who earlier safely moved over 115 campers out of his Bayview Campers Park, in the end, could not save his own home.

Similarly, Display Center, the spunky Collier Street industry that for weeks heartened the town with its drive to hold back record-breaking waters, saw its world come crashing in on it the same day. After enlisting employee and volunteer hands in constructing levees and pumping out encroaching waters, they could only stand back and watch as a wall of the plant caved in and Bear Creek quickly submerged the plant's equipment.

"It's over," was all one worker could say.

The most recent heartbreak came July 25, when at about 11:20 on a Sunday morning, a levee protecting Sny Island Drainage District broke, flooding some 45,000 acres of Illinois farmland and homes.

"I was there when the levee broke," said East Hannibal, Ill., resident Tom Campbell, who at the time was helping another man move his car, stalled at a crossroads near the break.

"I took off and I didn't look back."

What a year for the flood wall
The one levee that continues to hold is Hannibal's. After decades of wrangling over whether the town even wanted a flood wall, Hannibal saw its $8 million earthen and concrete structure completed just in time to hold back the biggest flood in the community's history.

In a symbolic show of the downtown devasation that might have been, shop owners along North Main Street are marking their windows with what the level of water would be in their stores had the flood wall never been built. Many of them remember all too clearly the previous record-setting flood of 1973 when the Mississippi hit a high of 28.59 feet and inundated Main Street businesses.

The U.S. Corps of Engineers estimates the flood wall has saved the town $14.5 million in damages during the two floods this year: $500,000 in May and $14 million during the current flood.

Even so, with periodic crest predictions of 32 feet or more ‹ high enough for the river to begin topping the new flood wall ‹ the levee has had to be shored up with "freeboard" forms packed with clay and sand, and mounds of sand and sandbags at the two farthest ends.

Several downtown merchants grew nervous days ago and began moving their merchandise to higher ground. But most have settled back in, all glad that for once, they're on the dry side.

"I have every confidence in the world in that new levee," said antiques merchant Ila Dimmitt.

One hand, one heart
For those whom the flood wall could not protect, the constant mobilization, the feeding, sandbagging, shuttling and sheltering has comprised a mosaic of compassion unmatched in the region's history.

Communities have begun to move as one, as its residents answer the siren call of burgeoning need.

With the Hannibal and Quincy bridges closed to traffic, the region was threatened with becoming a community split apart; splintered from families and jobs. But once again, people responded: by sharing rides and shuttling out of regional airports until the emergency subsides.

At this writing, there is a move on now by transportation and elected officials to provide ferry service from West Quincy to Quincy, Ill., for employees from both sides of the river. Traveling has become a hardship, and Keokuk's bridge is the closest open bridge to Hannibal, a 95-mile trip including detours.

Levee breaks in West Quincy and near East Hannibal, Ill., flooded highways leading to the Quincy and Hannibal bridges, and officials say it will be weeks before water drains away from those areas and bridge traffic can be restored.

With national news images nightly provide a panorama of the Midwest trauma, outside empathy has begun to flow like a river as well.

Truckloads of food, bottled water and goods have been shipped in from all points across the nation. The Salvation Army, using donated warehouse space at the old Building Technologies plant in West Side Industrial Park, set up a distribution center housing mountains of clothing and household goods coming in. Likewise, the Red Cross is crammed with boxes arriving at its doorstep, and the Hannibal Church of Christ has opened a relief center at 408 Mark Twain Ave. housing supplies donated from church drives in Louisiana and Texas.

In one vignette of kinship, residents of Marion County, W.Va., claimed Marion County, Mo., as a personal project. In a drive spurred by front-page stories in the Fairmont (W.Va.) Times-West Virginian, churches, community organizations and civic leaders there have banded together to send aid.

Infant supplies, blankets, non-perishable foods, cleaning and personal-hygiene goods, kitchen utensils and other items will make the long trip from Fairmont to Hannibal sometime this week. Money will be coming later.

"It's amazing ‹ it's totally awesome," said Salvation Army Capt. Anderson, when hearing of the long-distance pledges.

"I think it's beautiful the way people are responding, from the East Coast to the West Coast. It makes me proud to be an American. That may sound hokey, but I don't care."