MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) -- As the Mississippi reaches its high point in Memphis and attention turns to a time-consuming clean up, farmers downriver built homemade levees to protect their crops and engineers diverted water into a lake to ease the pressure on New Orleans levees.
Inmates were evacuated to a prison on higher ground and officials contemplated whether to open another spillway north of Baton Rouge.
The soaking in Memphis was isolated to low-lying neighborhoods, and forced hundreds of people from their homes, but no new serious flooding was expected. Officials trusted the levees would hold and protect the city's world-famous musical landmarks, from Graceland to Beale Street.
"It shouldn't get any worse than it currently is," said Elizabeth Burks of the Army Corps of Engineers, standing on a levee on the river's west bank.
To the south, residents in the Mississippi Delta prepared for the worst.
Scott Haynes, 46, estimated he would spend more than $80,000 on contractors to build levees around his house and grain silos, which hold 200,000 bushels of rice that he can't get out before the water comes. Heavy equipment has been mowing down his wheat fields to get to the dirt that is being used to build the levees, and he expected nearly all of his farmland to flood.
"That wheat is going to be gone, anyway," said Haynes, who lives in Carter, Miss., about 35 miles east of the Mississippi River. "We don't know if we're doing the right thing or not, but we can't not do it."
He knows time is not on his side. "I've got to get back on that dozer," he said, before walking away.
Nearby, Ed Jordan pointed to a high-water mark about 7-feet high in the family's old general store left by the deadly flood of 1927. Floods have taken crops since then, but the Mississippi River hasn't swamped their homes in generations.
He was afraid it will happen this time.
"We have 400 acres of beautiful wheat that's almost ready for harvest. We have about a thousand acres of corn that's chest high and just waiting on a combine (to harvest it). That's going to be gone," Jordan said. "I don't know what is going to happen to our houses."
Just down the road, relatives helped Jordan's 87-year-old aunt, Katherine Jordan, pack up a house. They loaded furniture on a cotton trailer and prepared to head to higher ground. A tractor outside scrapped dirt from a wheat field to form a levee.
Ed Jordan said he leased a house on higher ground and will live there until the water goes down. His aunt is going to live with her sister in nearby Yazoo City, where the Delta flatlands meet the central Mississippi hills.
Similar scenes played out across the Mississippi Delta, the flatlands that stretch about 200 miles from Memphis to Vicksburg, Miss. Shelters were open and farmers were already applying for federal aid.
Meanwhile, Memphis declared that the city was open for business.
An NBA playoff game Monday night featuring the Memphis Grizzlies at the FedEx Forum downtown was not affected, and a barbecue contest this weekend was moved to higher ground.
"The country thinks we're in lifeboats and we are underwater. For visitors, its business as usual," said Kevin Kane, president and chief executive of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau.
Other popular sites were also spared, including Sun Studio, where Elvis Presley made some of the recordings that helped him become king of rock `n' roll and Stax Records, which launched the careers of Otis Redding and the Staple Singers.
Graceland, Presley's former estate several miles south of downtown, was in no danger either.
"I want to say this: Graceland is safe And we would charge hell with a water pistol to keep it that way and I'd be willing to lead the charge," said Bob Nations Jr., director of the Shelby County Emergency Management Agency.
Talking about the river levels, he later added: "They're going to recede slowly, it's going to be rather putrid, it's going to be expensive to clean up, it's going to be labor-intensive."
Forecasters said it appeared the river was starting to level out and could crest by Tuesday morning at or near 48 feet, just shy of the all-time high of 48.7 feet.
At Sun Studio, where Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and a multitude of others also recorded, tourists from around the world continued to stream off buses and pose beneath the giant guitar hanging outside.
"We didn't really know what to expect," said Andy Reilly, a 32-year-old musician from Dublin, Ireland, who was in town to perform. "We're delighted it's not as bad as we thought it was going to be."
Because of heavy rain over the past few weeks and snowmelt along the upper reaches of the Mississippi, the river has broken high-water records upstream and inundated low-lying towns and farmland. The water on the Mississippi is so high that the rivers and creeks that feed into it are backed up, and that has accounted for some of the worst of the flooding so far.
Because of the levees and other defenses built since the cataclysmic Great Flood of 1927 that killed hundreds of people, engineers say it is unlikely any major metropolitan areas will be inundated as the high water pushes downstream over the next week or so. Nonetheless, they are cautious because of the risk of levee failures, as shown during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
In Louisiana, the Corps partially opened a spillway that diverts the Mississippi into a lake to ease pressure on the levees in greater New Orleans. As workers used cranes to remove some of the Bonnet Carre Spillway's wooden barriers, hundreds of people watched from the riverbank.
The spillway, which the Corps built about 30 miles upriver from New Orleans in response to the flood of 1927, was last opened in 2008. Monday marked the 10th time it has been opened since the structure was completed in 1931.
Rufus Harris Jr., 87, said his family moved to New Orleans in 1927 only months after the disaster. He was too young to remember those days, but the stories he heard gave him respect for the river.
"People have a right to be concerned in this area because there's always a possibility of a levee having a defective spot," Harris said as he watched water rush out.
The Corps has also asked for permission to open a spillway north of Baton Rouge for the first time since 1973. Officials warned residents that even if it is opened, they can expect water 5 to 25 feet deep over parts of seven parishes. Some of Louisiana's most valuable farmland is expected to be inundated.
At the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, home of the state's death row, officials started moving prisoners with medical problems to another prison as backwaters began to rise. The prisoners were moved in buses and vans under police escort. (photo below)
The prison holds more than 5,000 inmates and is bordered on three sides by the Mississippi. The prison has not flooded since 1927, though prisoners have been evacuated from time to time when high water threatened, most recently in 1997.
ABC
Dangerous reptiles and other animals have been forced to flee their homes, invading residential neighborhoods in Memphis, Tenn., for instance, as the Mississippi River continues to swell to record flood levels.
"You'll see your wildlife moving and, of course, their nature is to move to the higher, drier ground ... We'll see this for another couple of weeks," Bob Nations, Director of Shelby County Tennessee's Office of Preparedness, told ABC News' Diane Sawyer. "[It] probably will have a huge impact on our wildlife in this part of the county."
Residents of flooded areas have had to deal with electrical currents, chemicals and sewage in the water, but also wildlife scrambling for safety. Tennesseans have had to be careful of rampaging deer but the real danger lies with the water moccasins, also known as cottonmouths.
The venomous snakes are known to be aggressive when agitated, opening their mouths wide to reveal a white lining and deadly fangs when confronted with danger. The snakes are semi-aquatic vipers found near or in water, and are strong swimmers.
"They can cause a fairly serious bite," Dr. James Murphy of Smithsonian National Zoo said to ABC News. "It's normally not fatal, but there's an enormous amount of tissue damage. In fact, I've seen photographs of bites and it looks like somebody's arm has been put in a drill."
They have apparently been popping up everywhere, sometimes clinging to the trees. People returning to their homes after the flooding subsides might encounter them.
"There was a report of two over on the Mississippi banks yesterday, After any of these natural disasters, when you get into recovery and start moving things around, snake bites increase. That's a real threat."
Water moccasins are not the only wildlife threat for residents. The flood waters also contain alligators, spiders, rats and even fire ants according to experts.
Tennessee wildlife groups have been fielding dozens of calls from worried residents. The Shelby County Health Department has issued a special alert, warning its residents to be particularly wary of snakes, as a veritable jungle of critters scrambles to find safe ground.
I feel so sorry for those that are losing everything they have spent their life working for. I don't know what their insurance is like there but here you have to have specific flood insurance, your home owners policy will not cover flooding.
You know that the rivers in this country only flood like because of the dykes that were put up to hold them back? the land that has been captured from their original course belongs to the river it always has.
Having said that people who build in the 100 year flood plain have to expect to lose everything now and then.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
Maggot, it's already been claimed, the drought conditions in the southwest and the heavy rain in the east, are a result of global warming, as well as the ocean levels rising by 5 feet over the next 100 years.
take a look around you people, the ocean levels have dropped by 100's of feet through the course of time.
I live in a basin that was once an inland sea but is now high desert.
go figure.
Global warming is a bunch of shit.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Adams
Fox
VICKSBURG, Miss. -- William Jefferson paddles slowly down his street in a small boat, past his house and around his church, both flooded from the bulging Mississippi River that has rolled into the Delta.
"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."
The river was taking aim at one of the most poverty-stricken parts of the country after cresting Tuesday at Memphis, Tenn., just inches short of the record set in 1937. Some low-lying Memphis neighborhoods were inundated, but the city's high levees protected much of the rest of Memphis.
Jefferson's neighborhood in Vicksburg, a historic Mississippi city and the site of a pivotal Civil War battle, has been one of the hardest hit. Jefferson refuses to leave, 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.
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 sternest test ever.
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 to the levee since it was built in the 1970s.
In Vicksburg, which is at the southern tip of the rich alluvial soil in the central part of the state, the river was projected to peak Saturday just above the record set during the cataclysmic Great Flood of 1927. The town is home to thousands of soldier graves.
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."
As Mitchell and friends sat outside chatting in the breeze, children rode bikes nearby.
"Cutoff is a community where everybody lives from paycheck to paycheck. It's also a community where everybody sticks together," Mitchell said.
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.
I don't know what their insurance is like there but here you have to have specific flood insurance, your home owners policy will not cover flooding.
I don't recall the name of the town, but I heard on the news this morning that one community lost approximately 330 homes--of those, 25 were covered by flood insurance.
CNN
The Memphis, Tennessee, suburb of Northhaven has been flooded extensively, and now the community has some unofficial new rules aimed at keeping people safe.
"If you're thinking of going swimming in the floodwaters, don't," Shelby County sheriff's spokesman Chip Washington said. "Some folks have been in the water, letting their kids play in the water. It's extremely dangerous. It's no joke. It really isn't." HOW STUPID IS THAT??
Washington said people should be mindful of debris, contaminated water, rodent infestation and snakes. Animals have been fleeing the river basin, and poisonous water moccasins and copperheads have been showing up in people's yards.
"We had a moccasin hang out in the back for about an hour," Northaven auto mechanic Eric Scott said. "In 15 years I've never seen anything like this. We had flash floods last year, but it's like a zoo out back (of the auto shop)."
"There have been alligators showing up in people's yards," Washington said. "People need to be careful."
Officials have warned that floodwaters from the opening of the Morganza will lead to an exodus of wild animals, such as black bears, deer, and snakes, from basin. This image was sent to us this morning by a listener, who wrote: "This picture was taken by the daughter of a coworker of my wife. She was driving by the Morganza and spotted this snake along the highway. She yelled at her future father in law stop the car so she could get a picture."
And we would charge hell with a water pistol to keep it that way and I'd be willing to lead the charge," said Bob Nations Jr., director of the Shelby County Emergency Management Agency.
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