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CNN Sunday Morning

Midwest Prepares for Floods

Aired April 22, 2001 - 09:59   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: In the Midwest, levees and sandbags are all that stand between the Mississippi River and thousands of people. Davenport, Iowa is one place that is scrambling because it does not have a protective seawall.

CNN's Bob Franken is there. He's trying to stay dry, and he brings us the latest.

Good morning, Bob.

BOB FRANKEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. There's been sporadic rainfall, as you know. At the moment, we're between storms.

As you can see in back of me, it's really quite now. They've done about all the scrambling they can in constructing, in place of the seawall they don't have, constructing a 23 foot above the normal flood stage seawall made out of sandbags.

They've been scrambling for well over a week now to put it in place. They pretty much have. If you can see in back of me, the sandbags are up against the buildings there. Also up against those buildings, the water that has already overflowed the banks. It's a good block away to where the Mississippi River normally flows. You can see the baseball stadium there, they've given up on that. That's going to be quite flooded. The baseball team, the single-A baseball team, the River Bandits, is going to be playing its games elsewhere for awhile.

If you look just a little bit over there, Jeff, you will see that people are moving along what normally is dry land, taking what is now the preferred mode of transportation, the boat, as they move here and there in the city of Davenport.

Davenport is waiting for the river to crest. The original projections were for about 21 feet. It now looks like it's going to be 22-and-a-half feet. That's the latest prediction. Which, of course, would make it very touch and go if that this seawall would hold since it's 23 feet.

The weather will be key. Thus far, the rain has pretty much followed the predictions, which was for sporadic showers. That will be OK. The people who are in charge of these things have factored that in. But if the storms get worse than they had predicted, of course, that could be big problems. We'll find out the fate of Davenport, Iowa, probably tomorrow night or Tuesday.

As for upstream, Prairie du Chien still continues to get an awful lot of water in Wisconsin, to about eight inches over flood stage there. Many of the low-lying areas have flat out been flooded out. People are still trying to stay in their homes. But, this is the next place that people are watching to see if in fact this flood is going to wreck havoc or they're going to be able to contain it -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Bob Franken, Davenport, Iowa -- Kyra.

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