RENA LARA, Miss. (AP) — Floodwaters from the Mississippi River and its tributaries spilled across farm fields, cut off churches, washed over roads and forced people from their homes Wednesday in the Mississippi Delta, a poverty-stricken region only a few generations from sharecropping days.
People used boats to navigate flooded streets as the crest rolled slowly downstream, bringing misery to poor, low-lying communities. Hundreds have left their homes in the Delta in the past several days as the water rose toward some of the highest levels on record.
The flood crest is expected to push all the way through the Delta by late next week.
“It’s getting scary,” said Rita Harris, 43, who lives in a tiny wooden house in the shadow of the levee in the Delta town of Rena Lara, population 500. “They won’t let you go up there to look at the water.”
Officials in the town, which has no local newspaper or TV stations, tried to reassure residents that they are doing what they can to shore up the levee and that they will warn people if they need to leave.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour urged people to get out if they think there is even a chance their homes will flood. He said there is no reason to think a levee on the Yazoo River would fail, but if it did, 107 feet of water would flow over small towns.
“More than anything else, save your life and don’t put at risk other people who might have to come in and save your lives,” he said.
The Mississippi Delta is a leaf-shaped expanse of rich soil between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers, extending about 200 miles from Memphis, Tenn., to Vicksburg, Miss. Along the way are towns whose names are familiar to Civil War buffs, aficionados of the blues, and scholars of the civil rights era: Clarksdale, Greenwood, Greenville and Yazoo City.
While some farms in the Delta are prosperous, there is also grinding poverty. Eleven counties with a combined population of about 400,000 touch the Mississippi River in Mississippi, and nine of them have poverty rates at least double the national average of 13.5 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The governor said the state is asking local officials to get in touch with people who might have no electricity and phones and thus no way to get word of the flooding.
“It’s a tiny number, but we have to find them,” said Mr. Barbour, a native of Yazoo City.
In Greenville, Liz Jones, who is unemployed, lives on the second floor of a housing project and worries what might happen in the event of a levee break. She has no means of transportation.
“I got a baby and my mama. I don’t know what we’d do about food and clothes and stuff,” she said.
Swollen by weeks of heavy rain and snowmelt, the Mississippi has been breaking high-water records that have stood since the 1920s and ’30s. It is projected to crest at Vicksburg on May 19 and shatter the mark set there during the cataclysmic Great Flood of 1927. From there, it is expected to reach New Orleans on May 23.
Even after the crest passes, water levels will remain high for weeks, and it could take months for flooded homes to dry out.
About 600,000 acres of cultivated row crops could flood, mainly winter wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton and rice, said Andy Prosser, spokesman with the Mississippi Department of Agriculture.
Even if the levees hold, the state expects to lose $150 million to $200 million worth of crops, the governor said. Mississippi’s catfish farmers could also be wiped out if the Yazoo floods their ponds and washes away their fish.
Much farther downstream, Louisiana officials were awaiting an Army Corps of Engineers decision on whether to open the Morganza spillway to take the pressure off the levees protecting Baton Rouge and, downstream, New Orleans and the many oil refineries in between.
Corps spokeswomen Rachel Rodi said daily inspections are being made on all levees along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, and so far no major problems have been spotted.
“It’s nothing we haven’t been able to handle,” Ms. Rodi said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.