Midwest braces for flooding

Source: Agencies  |   2008-6-17  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

A STRING of American towns along the Mississippi River in Iowa's south and east prepared for new problems a day after flood fears eased in the university city of Iowa City.

Sandbagging was under way in Burlington, a key rail hub, to build the city's levee system and protect it from the river; 350 people had been evacuated.

In Grandview, a small town to the north, a 35-year-old man apparently drowned in Iowa River floodwaters. It was the state's fourth death from flooding.

"It's likely that we will see major and serious flooding" in the southeast, Governor Chet Culver said. "We are taking precautionary steps, we are evacuating where necessary, but that is going to be the next round here."

Elsewhere in the soaked US Midwest, National Guard soldiers hoped to fill about 500,000 sandbags to fortify levees along a 24-kilometer stretch of the Mississippi River in western Illinois and flood waters began to recede in parts of western Michigan.

The Iowa River's peak arrived early and lower than expected, possibly because of a number of levee breaches downstream that opened the channel, the National Weather Service said. Governor Culver called word of Iowa City's peak "a little bit of good news," but said the situation was still precarious.

President George W. Bush will visit the Midwest on Thursday to inspect flood damage, the White House said yesterday as the president wrapped up a week-long trip in Europe. White House press secretary Dana Perino said the places the president would visit had not been chosen.

Iowa City, which has a population of about 60,000, evacuated 5,000 people on Sunday, and 400 homes had suffered significant damage. But the river was expected to begin receding last night as the threat of new flooding flowed southeast.