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Flood waters continued to drain out of Iowa and Wisconsin into the Mississippi River and riverside towns continued to add sandbags to the tops of levees in an effort to keep those waters flowing southwards. For the third day in a row, the floods were Story of the Day as almost two dozen levees failed, flooding farmland in Iowa, Missouri and Illinois. Only NBC led with the floods. CBS' substitute anchor Russ Mitchell teed off with a sports story: the announcement by golfer Tiger Woods that he won the USOpen Monday while playing with a torn knee and a broken leg. ABC led with President George Bush's call for Congress to repeal the ban on exploration for oil in coastal waters. Both ABC and NBC aired from Washington DC since anchors Charles Gibson and Brian Williams attended the afternoon memorial for NBC's Tim Russert at the Kennedy Center.

All three networks stationed correspondents along the banks of the Mississippi River downstream from the crest. "The Big Muddy is fouled and fierce," warned NBC's Michelle Kosinski as she reported on 1,000 people filling one million sandbags in Quincy Ill. CBS' Cynthia Bowers watched "locals, inmates, soldiers" fill 500,000 "sandbags of salvation" in Clarksville Mo. ABC's Ryan Owens (embargoed link) stood atop a levee in Canton Mo with water lapping "just a couple of feet away."

The floods of 1993 inspired a couple of responses along the Mississippi River--a drive to strengthen levees and a drive to remove them. CBS' Bowers reported that $4bn had been spent on mitigation projects to buy up low-lying land and move flood prone homes. NBC' Kerry Sanders reported on "commissions and recommendations" to upgrade levees to protect against the cresting river's 1750 lbs of pressure on each square foot of wall. Yet the upshot has been a grade D on the structural integrity of the levee system from the American Society of Civil Engineers. "Many of these river towns have not had the money to improve their levees," ABC's Owens concluded.

To the north, ABC's Barbara Pinto (embargoed link) and CBS' Seth Doane followed up from Iowa now that the waters have receded. "Everything reeks with the stench of toxic mud," complained ABC's Pinto in Cedar Rapids, where ten square miles had been under water and hundreds of homes had their foundations ruined and were rendered uninhabitable. CBS' Doane brought us the terrible tale of Gina Rebitz and Bruce Recker for his Other America feature. The couple had to move into a trailer after their home was wiped out by a tornado on Memorial Day. Now floods have chased them out of that trailer leaving them "living in a Red Cross shelter feeling helpless." Rebitz reflected on her fate: "We are not homeless people but in reality…we actually are homeless."


Andrew Tyndall 6/20/08 6:28:14 pm

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