Missouri River flooding could cause evacuations

The midwest part of the country cannot catch a break. My family lives in the Kansas City area and my mother mentioned this to me yesterday. The unfortunate part of all of this is this flooding comes in the aftermath of the tornadoes, and the flooding of the Mississippi river. I cannot recall some devastation in my lifetime. I hope when people are told to evacuate, that they heed the call and leave.

As the Missouri River continues to rise, Ken Tanner isn’t taking any chances.

“I have a story-and-a-half house, and in the ’93 flood water got up into the top floor,” he said. “I’m expecting that to happen again.”

Tanner started moving things last week from his home in Sugar Lake, Mo. — about 45 miles north of Kansas City — to a storage unit in St. Joseph.

The levels marked by the great flood of 1993 may be topped in coming weeks at some spots along the river.

Gavins Point Dam in South Dakota is expected by mid-June to begin releasing up to 150,000 cubic feet of water per second, more than double the previous record in 1997, thanks to heavy rains and snow melt up north.

“Precipitation has led to near-record or record runoffs this year,” said Jud Kneuvean with the Army Corps of Engineers. “We haven’t seen flooding like this in that area since the 1950s.”

On Thursday, the threat of rising water prompted warnings from the Corps of Engineers and a visit to St. Joseph by Gov. Jay Nixon.

The Corps is holding conference calls with emergency managers and others, and plans to meet about levees this week, said Kneuvean, chief of emergency management for the Kansas City district.

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