Mississippi Rising

By Howard G. Chua-Eoan

No prophecies were uttered when it all began, when the wind blew and the rain descended on the plains. No dire predictions augured the disaster; no omens hinted at a catastrophe of epic proportions. But for a month, the sky has fallen, bit by bit and drop by drop, and the waters have gathered on the face of the earth to flow into the river; and now it has risen up and rolled onward like an ocean on the march, capturing farmland and township, bridge and barge.

The flood does not discriminate. Among its detritus are picnic tables and automobiles, tree stumps and deer. At least two children. Even the barges that usually command the waterway as they move the river basin's produce to the rest of the world have been rendered helpless. They are inert and tethered to a vanished shore. The high waters have made the river unnavigable; there is no longer enough clearance for large ships to pass under the Mississippi's bridges.

Crops are submerged under inches of water -- and the entire planting season may be ruined if the fall freeze comes early or even on time. Bob Plathe, who farms 800 acres of soybean and corn in Lu Verne, Iowa, echoes the region's lament. "There aren't a lot of farmers around anymore who can take a hit like this and survive. It's pretty hard for a third-generation farmer to lose his grandpa's farm."

The Governors of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri, the states along the 500 miles of the river most affected by the swelling waters, have appealed for assistance. And last week Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy made an inspection tour of the region. In some places, there was no land to see. "Fields look like mirrors," said Espy. In Washington the President said help would have to come from Congress. "We don't have enough money in the emergency discretionary fund to meet the rather massive losses these farmers are facing."

No one yet knows what the real numbers will be. There are many being cast about, but they swirl like the river. The first estimates run to $1.2 billion in flood damage. Barge owners claim $1 million a day in lost business. Meanwhile, the river's height is nearing the records set in 1965. In Davenport, Iowa, the waters were 7 ft. above flood level. In St. Louis they were 10 ft. above. There the precipitation over the past six months has been more than twice the amount in the same period in 1992. The past eight months have been the wettest in Iowa in 121 years of record-keeping. And the forecast calls for more rain.

The river has its romance. Explorers once thought it could provide a quick path to China. Walt Whitman said the Mediterranean was its only rival in grandeur. T.S. Eliot, who was born in St. Louis, was surely inspired by the Mississippi when he referred to a river in his poem The Dry Salvages as "a big strong brown god." But poetry isn't appropriate at times like these. "You can't say the river is very charitable," says a tract attributed to Mark Twain, perhaps the Mississippi's most famous observer. "Except for the fact that the streets are quiet . . ., there's really nothing good to say about a flood."

With reporting by Elizabeth Taylor/Chicago