Cairo, Illinois is a little obamaville, not worth anywhere near the 130,000 productive acres of farm land in southeastern Missouri that will be destroyed, not to mention the 100 or so farm houses that will be destroyed.
I read a report in a Missouri newspaper that it would flood closer to a half million acres and effect 500-1,000 people.
This is a political decision to protect "Holders people", nothing more and nothing less.
Spare Cairo? Simple, just blow up the levees on your own side of the river, flood your own land.
“This is a political decision to protect “Holders people”, nothing more and nothing less.”
You nailed it! As well, if they destroy enough crop land for the year, it will help are great economic recovery....
Evacuation no longer voluntary in Cairo. They have until midnight to get out.
Another storm is getting going to hit Illinois
One of the farmers who will be affected called local Chicago talk radio yesterday. He said Illinois didn’t maintain their levees properly (kinda like New Orleans?) and now Missouri farmers will suffer. He was very angry.....Today’s news reports were turning it into a racial issue. Probably Dem Illinois politicians trying to get ahead of the story of their negligence..
Otherwise one would pipe out and say the Commission might as well bully the comets in their courses and undertake to make them behave, as try to bully the Mississippi into right and reasonable conduct.”
He did have a way with words.
And we have seen the Mighty Mississip laugh over and through the levees time and again - sometimes burying whole towns.
Since when does one person/s have the right to pass their fate on to someone else? If they can divert the water to the harm of no one else - fine. But where in hell do they think they have the right to wipe other peoples homes and living off the face of the earth?
I pray they can be stopped. And then, if their little town is destroyed, let them do what another town did - rebuild HIGHER - out of the flood plain. DUH. Which, after other such examples, they should have doing anyway.
I puzzles me, with all the building ‘codes’ across across the country, they still let people build in flood and fire and mudslide zones.
Cairo is destroying itself slowly anyway...why not just finish the job in a judicious manner??? Good riddance...
***Cairo, Illinois is a little obamaville,****
Back about 1969, the Cairo police department was preparing for race riots so built their own armored personel carrier. They called it THE WAR WAGON. I never heard if they got to try it out.
Cairo is a perfect example of a dying town. Racial unrest in the 60s & 70s drove nearly all of the businesses and jobs away. When you drive through town you mostly see boarded up businesses. Recently the town has suffered a string of arsons. There are lots of beautiful mansions that have no value—no one who has any choice wants to live there.
I believe that any dispute between Missouri and Illinois over what the Corps of Engineers will do is bound to favor Illinois—after all, where is this administration from? That said the people of Cairo (pronounced care-o around here) both black and white are human beings who could very well lose their homes and belongings if the Corps doesn’t blow the levees in Missouri.
In addition, there is apparently a lot of toxic waste/pollution in Cairo that an inundation of the town would spread far down stream.
I have been following this for a week. Search Birds Point Levee for an interesting history.
First post. Long-time lurker and contributor.
The Corps of Engineers will need national guards troops armed and ready to fire back if they go ahead with this. There has been gunfire in the past during Mississippi flooding as both sides tried to breach levies on the other side to protect their homes and farmland, and if I were a Misssouri farmer looking at some fellows planting charges on a levy on my side of the river to flood my land I’d drop them in a second. And no Missouri jury would convict me.
Cario is a mini New Orleans, it sits in a flood prone bowl, it is also a social cesspool hardly worth saving at any cost.
Man proposes, but nature disposes. Puny man thinks he can control the actions of rivers like the Mississippi, which is a fool’s course of action, for the river will win out in the end.
I seldom (as in hardly ever) hear a discussion of the disaster waiting to happen at the Little River Control Structures. They damn near lost the whole shebang during the big 1973 flood, so they built the Old River Auxiliary Control Structure. But, for all the construction, higher and higher levees, the Mississippi will one day surely breach at Old River. Divert, and cascade down the Atchafalaya River and into the Atchafalaya flood plain as it has done at least twice in recorded history.
And the result of the entire Mississippi River channelization for flood control has been, the subsidence of now settled former natural wetlands, making them ever more prone to flooding when (not if) the river levees fail. Not to mention the loss of Louisiana coastline, which has receded several thousand feet in just the past few decades.
But, I am just an old fart with a eighth grade education, so what do I know.
So, no one in FEMA thought of this BEFORE it started raining?
I’ve been to Cairo IL. Let it flood. The only thing better would be if we could flood East St. Louis, too.
Blowing a hole in the levee. What could possibly go wrong?