In the Midwest, Relentless Floods Dredge Up ‘Shadow’ of 1993

DAVENPORT, Iowa — In Davenport, where the overflow from the Mississippi River is lapping at a new taproom in the heart of downtown, weary business owners cannot get another flood from years ago out of their minds.

Three hundred miles downriver, in Valmeyer, Ill., some of those who stuck around in the lowlands after the Great Flood of 1993 are packing up tools and hat collections and racing to higher ground.

In Clarksville, Mo., inmates are laying down sandbags in front of shops in the heart of the village, which has raised its makeshift levees three times just this spring and exhausted its 400 residents. Many residents remember doing the same thing 26 years ago.

And in Prairie du Rocher, Ill., local officials are busily preparing a church for a possible influx of people made temporarily homeless, again, by flooding.

The Midwest has been drowning this spring, reviving painful memories of the Great Flood of 1993. That flood, one of the worst in American history, left crops, cattle and entire towns ravaged. Waters rose to the attics of farmhouses. Coffins bobbed to the surface in a cemetery and floated away. Fifty lives were lost.

In four towns along the Mississippi River that are now facing down floodwaters once more, the consequences of the decisions made in the aftermath of 1993 have suddenly come back, sharper and more divisive than ever.

“It lingers,” said Dylan Steil, an owner of a restaurant in Davenport that flooded in April. “’93 was very prevalent in our minds this year. I’ve lived in this town my whole life, and it’s kind of a shadow.”

It is too early to tell whether this year’s slow and steady devastation in the Midwest will reach the levels of a quarter century ago. But already, the situation is drawing comparisons from federal weather officials to the catastrophic events of 1993 and is sending shivers of recognition down the spines of many who survived them.

Through April and May, people who live along the Mississippi have repeated the same rituals that they did then, the grind of filling sandbags, monitoring the crest of the river and anxiously watching the rain, which has fallen at historic levels.

Levees have been breached in the last several days, forcing sudden evacuations, making roads impassable and leaving part of one town on the Mississippi underwater. More rain is expected in towns along the river later this week.

Edward Clark, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Water Center, said that 2019 and 1993 have many of the same alarming ingredients: an especially rainy fall the year before, a wet winter and heavy rains in spring.

Throughout the Midwest, soils are saturated, making it difficult for farmers to plant crops. Areas from Oklahoma to Illinois received record rainfall in the last month. Rivers are brimming over, backyards are swamped and fields are filled with water that has nowhere to go.

“In 1993, the heavy precipitation continued all the way through June,” Mr. Clark said. “In 2019, we are projecting that there will be likely above-average precipitation over the same areas of the country that are already experiencing flooding.”

That means that June and July, if they are as rainy as expected, will mean more water, more pain, more destruction.

“It’s going to continue,” Mr. Clark said. “The magnitude of the flooding could go well into summer.”

In Davenport, the River Runs Through It

The herringbone floors had barely been walked on, the caramel banquettes were brand-new and Half Nelson, an elegant restaurant in Davenport, Iowa, that is steps from the Mississippi, was one day away from opening when the river rushed in.

A temporary flood barrier unexpectedly gave way this spring, allowing a torrent of muddy water from the Mississippi River to inundate several blocks of downtown Davenport. It damaged cars, apartment buildings and taverns, filling one nearby restaurant with enough water to nearly submerge its C-shaped turquoise bar.

The breach also abruptly reopened a debate in Davenport, a city of 100,000 that wears a unique badge, on principle: Despite being hit hard by the flood of 1993, it proudly, defiantly remains the largest city on the Mississippi without permanent flood protection.

But after the temporary barrier failed in April, and spring rains threaten more flooding ahead, Davenport’s refusal to put up a bulky, concrete wall to protect itself is now being questioned. On Sunday, the river crested at more than 21 feet, the second highest level since 1993.

“The city of Davenport got a little too complacent,” said Mike Osborn, an owner of Half Nelson, who surveyed his shuttered restaurant as it hummed with dehumidifiers. “The city had a good flood plan. It’s been successful since 1993 — until this year.”

The flood plan, devised in the aftermath of 1993, called for embracing the river rather than redirecting more water downstream, an approach applauded by environmental activists. While other towns built ever-higher levees, the city of Davenport bought up property on the floodplain. The city now has nine miles of waterfront, which always floods.

“Rather than building their community to live behind big flood walls, they’ve chosen to keep the community more engaged with the river,” said Larry Weber, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and a founder of the Iowa Flood Center at the University of Iowa.

But a lot has changed in downtown Davenport since 1993. The area is booming with breweries, loft apartments, competing boutique hotels and a year-round farmers’ market. Another addition: the Figge Art Museum, a modern structure overlooking the water. It is designed to withstand floods; this year, it has stayed open but was damaged.

“It’s a point of pride in Davenport that it floods and that the river is allowed to flood,” said Tim Schiffer, the executive director of the Figge. “But this one has made everybody think again about that.”

Some business owners have begun to dream of building some kind of wall along the Mississippi, anything to help shield their properties and the newly shiny downtown.

“I feel like there should be some kind of a happy medium where they find something that’s still pretty to look at and you can still protect businesses,” said Cris Ryder, a Realtor whose downtown office was inundated by floodwaters.

For now, businesses along the river are closed, their insides a shambles. Signs are taped to windows, warning of mold remediation in progress. Orange dumpsters outside are filled with chunks of drywall and insulation. A T-shirt for sale in one shop bears the motto “We are mightier than the Mississippi.”

Valmeyer Moved Up a Hill. Not Everyone Went.

The thing about preparing for floods, the mayor of Valmeyer, Ill., said as he guided his red sedan along a perilously high Mississippi River, is that you can do everything right and the community can still be in danger.

“You can only position yourself so there is the least amount of loss,” the mayor, Howard Heavner, 58, said.

Valmeyer, an agricultural village of 1,200 people, is separated from the Mississippi by lush farmland and a grassy berm that serves as a levee. In 1993, the river crested the berm, filling homes to their rooftops. Livestock drowned. School was held in trailers for two years. After that, most of the people of Valmeyer made the difficult — and somewhat radical — decision to move the entire town from the place they called “the bottoms” up a limestone hill to a place they call “the bluffs.”

Homes, churches and the school were razed and rebuilt, a process that tore at the town’s psyche. The business district never quite came back. But experts in flood management hailed Valmeyer as a case study in how to respond to disaster. Mr. Heavner, who built a house in the bluffs, said it was the right decision.

“There was a belief that it was never going to happen,” Mr. Heavner said of the giant 1993 flood. “Now you can’t tell people it’s not going to happen.”

The problem is that not everyone moved.

Last week, the river had spilled into farmland at the town’s edges and was licking at the rim of Valmeyer’s levee, threatening to pour into still-occupied homes in the bottoms. Residents were scrambling to find hotels, or family members to stay with. Trucks stuffed with boxes streamed down country roads, boats and trailers rigged to the back, their drivers trying to find places to stash them on higher ground. The sheriff’s department said it expected the river to crest the levee by Wednesday evening.

Among those racing to evacuate was the mayor’s father, Robert Heavner, 80, whose home in the lowlands had been inundated in 1993. He rebuilt it with flood insurance money and his own hands. He respected people’s decision to move up the hill, he said, but for him staying in the bottoms was the “most economical way to do what I did.”

He also loved the quiet of the bottoms. “This is one of the most beautiful places,” he said, motioning to the limestone hills on his left, the cornfields before him.

He said he had always known another flood could come. After 1993 he started calling the area the Promised Land. “Promised to flood again,” he said.

His son, the mayor, said he would not judge those who had stayed put. He said that they “chose their own path.” He could not force them to leave, he said.

Touching the Mississippi, Again, in Clarksville

The motto of Clarksville, Mo., noted on a sign at the entrance to the town’s riverfront park, is “Touch the Mississippi.”

This week, the sign stands just above the water line. Tourists, who sometimes flock to town for an up-close view of the churning Mississippi, have fled.

In fact, there are few people left in Clarksville, population 442, to do the work of fighting floods.

The town has relied mostly on volunteers from AmeriCorps, female inmates from a local correctional facility and National Guard soldiers, all of whom work into the night building monumental sandbag walls.

Clarksville has flooded three times since March. The town’s residents, many of whom are older, say they are simply worn out.

“We were kidding that the average age of those helping was 72, and that may not be too far off,” said Sue Lindemann, a town alderwoman, who also serves as Clarksville’s emergency management director.

“Twenty years ago, Clarksville was a very vibrant city and full of artisans,” said Ms. Lindemann, who is 70. “But a lot of the artisans have moved away, because if you’re under water for two months of the year, it’s hard to make money.”

This is a far different scene than in 1993, when the river rose to 37 feet 7 inches and some 2,000 volunteers from all over the region filled sandbags, helping to save the town’s buildings even as most of its streets were inundated.

But with waters now rising again, and expected to come close to the heights of 1993, a dwindling set of volunteers were left to the grueling routine of protecting the town. They pack sandbags. They drive back roads to see which ones are clear. They decide which buildings should get first priority for sandbagging, a fraught choice that sometimes means picking between the bank, people’s homes, the library or the shops.

“It’s overwhelming, actually,” said Margie Greenwell, who owns a furniture-making shop with her husband. “It’s very depressing when you think about it. So you don’t think about it.”

By Sunday, the sandbag walls were finished, rising to 38 feet, and held steady when the river crested at just over 37 feet. More rain is expected this week, so the river is likely to rise again. The governor, Mike Parson, toured Clarksville on Monday to survey the damage.

It had once been rare to consider leaving a place like this, founded more than 200 years ago and full of small-town pride and a downtown of brick buildings on the National Register of Historic Places.

All the water has changed that.

“People have said, ‘Hey, you know what, we can’t handle this,’” said Ms. Lindemann. “The perpetual flooding is draining us.”

And it has made attracting newcomers virtually impossible.

Erin Garrison, who owns a pottery studio and shop, said efforts to recruit artists to empty storefronts — even at $200 a month — have followed a distinct pattern.

“Everything is going really well, and then they ask about the river: ‘Does it ever flood?’” Ms. Garrison said.

Prairie du Rocher, Ill., Searches for Survival.

It was miracle that Prairie du Rocher, Ill., survived the 1993 flood.

Twenty-six years ago, with floodwaters headed straight for the village, local officials took a desperate gamble, dynamiting and then digging two holes in the levee above town, diverting the flow away from the community’s core. The decision defied the advice of the Army Corps of Engineers and flooded dozens of farmhouses above the village.

But it saved Prairie du Rocher, a settlement founded by the French in 1722. White clapboard homes and a little downtown remain intact. So does the memory of the way town saved itself, said Steve Gonzalez, the local levee commissioner.

This year, people in the region will use a similar tactic to save Prairie du Rocher, said Mr. Gonzalez, though the hope is to blast the levee at a higher point. Mr. Gonzalez and the mayor, Raymond Cole, both said they believed the center of the village sat high enough that it would not flood this year.

This does not mean they think the village, population 600, is safe.

The issue, they said, sitting recently inside the town office, which shares space with the fire department and the Postal Service, is the town’s long-term viability.

After the 1993 flood, the people of Prairie du Rocher strengthened their levee with the help of federal dollars. In 2004, the federal government gave the levee an accreditation that meant that people living in town did not need flood insurance, said Mr. Cole. But the government is planning to release a new map that he believes will require people to obtain expensive insurance and adhere to costly building requirements.

“People aren’t going to want to come to town, or build,” he said. Already, the town has struggled to grow, because people are aware of impending rules. Homes have not appreciated, he said. In 1999, Mr. Cole’s house was appraised at $86,000. This year, it was appraised at $84,000.

“In the short-term we’re not too worried,” he said. “It’s the long-term survival of the community that is the real struggle.”

Mr. Gonzalez, though, is cooking up a plan to save the town once again. He is hoping to convince the federal government to incorporate the town into a national park — and make Washington responsible for fortifying the community from floods. If this doesn’t work, he said, flood insurance rules may be “the nail in the coffin for this town.”