Flooded cities battle to contain Mississippi River

FOLEY, Missouri (AP) -- For the second time in 15 years, Keith Aubuchon found himself packing his belongings and evacuating his home to escape a "100-year" flood of the Mississippi River.

Houses on Pillsbury Road in Lincoln County, Missouri can barely be seen Thursday.

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He returned and remodeled his house after the flood of 1993. This time, he doesn't know whether it will be worth coming back.

"This is my second flood. I don't think there will be a third," Aubuchon said as he drove a pickup loaded with a washing machine and other belongings out of his subdivision.

Floodwaters rapidly filled the roads, yards and gullies behind him just hours after a levee breached north of Foley. Authorities estimate that much of the small town will be flooded by the weekend.

Three Mississippi River levees broke Thursday in Lincoln County, sending a creeping wave of water toward Foley and causing more concern in nearby Winfield.

The river was overflowing 90 percent of the levees in eastern Lincoln County, and at least four more breaches were expected to aggravate the flooding overnight, said Lincoln County Emergency Management spokesman Andy Binder. See what causes a levee to fail »

While the situation worsened in Lincoln County, it improved slightly elsewhere along the river after the National Weather Service significantly lowered crest predictions. The revisions came after several levee breaks in Illinois, including one Wednesday near Meyer that could inundate 17,000 acres of farmland with water that otherwise would have been flowing south.

That means many towns along the river won't see the record-level flood crests they expected. The new prediction shows St. Louis cresting at 37.3 feet Friday, well short of the 49.58-foot mark in 1993. iReport.com: High water creeps up riverfront

But National Weather Service meteorologist Jim Kramper said river towns aren't safe yet.

"There will still be a lot of places with major flooding," Kramper said. "Even at the levels we're expecting now, a lot of places are threatened."

The relief came at a cost for communities where levees failed. The first levee breached Wednesday in Lincoln County near Winfield, about 50 miles north of St. Louis, followed Thursday by the series of breaks that spilled water into sparsely populated areas, Binder said....

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