Mississippi levee buckles under rising waters

Rising waters burst through an overtaxed levee on the Mississippi River Tuesday, sending gushing torrents into an Illinois town as the sodden US midwest reels from days of epic flooding.

The levee break left Highway 34 at Gulfport, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, under water prompting officials to close a bridge to the neighboring town of Burlington and creating havoc for commuters.

News reports said a flash flood warning was in effect Tuesday in Henderson County, Illinois as a result of surging waters from the levee break.

More than 1,000 Illinois National Guard troops were working alongside hundreds of inmates from the state's prisons to shore up levees throughout the state, a spokeswoman with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency told CNN.

"We were very, very disappointed that this levee broke today," said emergency official Patti Thompson, adding the imposing Mississippi, "is a very powerful river and it can be hard to harness" even in drier times, let alone during record flooding.

Officials had anticipated that the levees could be a weak point and had sought to shore them up with sand bags, she said, adding: "We have been focusing quite a bit on all of these levees."

President George W. Bush vowed Tuesday to help flood-ravaged states get back on their feet, and was due to tour neighboring devastated Iowa on Thursday.

"I fully understand people are upset when they lose their home. A person's home is their most valued possession," Bush said, adding he had been briefed by administration officials on the disaster.

"We want to work with state and local folks to have a clear strategy to help people find -- get back into a place that -- where they can live," the president said, adding that housing and fresh water were the top priorities.

Bush, who was sharply criticized for the administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, is to visit Iowa with a federal disaster response team.

"I'm going to take our team down to meet with the folks in Iowa," he said, adding, "unfortunately I've been to too many disasters as president."
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This is definitely something we need to watch as the Mississippi River contiues to crest. The billions of dollars in damage to crops and land will now only make food prices rise even more than they already are. And while no one has yet mentioned this as a repercussion of global warming, this is exactly what scientists predicted for this region in regards to climate change. However, this government doesn't want to do anything about that or anything to spend our money to shore up infrastructure here.They are too busy waging oil wars in the Middle East and looking for more ways to satisfy their oil addiction while the heartland of this country is under water with much of the rest of it thirsting for it.