“Floods are devastating reminders of the sheer power of water and the (usually) quiet giant we live beside in the Mississippi River.  Today, we are still haunted by the memory of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 – one of the single-greatest flood events in U.S. history.

At one point in this dramatic event, the Mississippi River spanned 60 miles in width just below Memphis.  The total destruction included (at a minimum) 246 deaths and an estimated $400 million in direct damages (nearly $5 billion in today’s dollars); a quarter of the latter estimated to be crops and farm animals. 

Heavy rains had raised the possibility of flooding, but no one expected a disaster on the scale of the ensuing event.

The first Mississippi River levee to burst in the flood was at Dorena, Missouri, on April 16, where 1,200 feet of levee crumbled.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported that one million acres of land were flooded in this single event.  Similar levee failures and massive overtopping would be repeated downriver at the rate of two each day.  In all, 145 levees failed in the Great Mississippi Flood.

When the event was over nearly two months later, more than 26,000 square miles of land in seven states inhabited by approximately 930,000 Americans had been flooded, according to the American National Red Cross.

The flood reshaped topography as well as the federal response to disasters of this unimaginable magnitude. In the days long before the existence of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the disaster demanded a new kind of response from government and the public.

In the aftermath of the Great Mississippi Flood, President Calvin Coolidge tasked Cabinet members, including then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, and the American Red Cross to provide relief and recovery.  The Hoover Flood Commission led a government-wide response that involved every federal agency and $10 million in support.  The American public also donated heavily to the relief effort, doubling the amount spent by the federal government.

Following the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, a new sense of urgency dominated the flood protection issue in America. 

Because of a system of levees, floodwalls, gates and berms in place up and down the Mississippi River, an event on the scale of 1927 is now highly improbable.  But as recently as 1993, we in Missouri have seen the raw, ugly strength of the Mississippi River out of its banks.

Today, 80 years after the most destructive river flood in American history, we have a continuing obligation to protect the people and the property that lie beside the Mississippi River.  A national treasure and a vital transportation corridor 99.9 percent of the time, that remaining portion of the river’s existence can be deadly.  As a result, Cape Girardeau, Ste. Geneveive, Sikeston, New Madrid and Caruthersville, along with I-55 and I-57, are just a few of the areas shielded by flood protection infrastructure which originated following the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.

As we were reminded in 1993, flood protection is not dependent on new technologies, nor does risk simply abate with time.  The only way to stop a flood is to contain it, long in advance, and to prepare for a range of conditions and circumstances that constitute the worst-case scenario.  Planning for a major New Madrid earthquake at flood stage must be part of every emergency plan in the country.

This is a task for federal, state and local governments, as well as private citizens, as we reflect on a lesson our region learned 80 years ago.

(  Editor’s note: PBS has an excellent website on the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/flood/  ) ”