Fear of flooding has prompted Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder (R-MO) to mobilize 165 Missouri National Guard members to reinforce levees on the upper Mississippi River. That brings to 175 the number of Guardsmen mobilized by Kinder to support emergency response efforts and to deal with flooding that is expected in the coming week.

Kinder took the action in his role as activing governor, which he is exercising while Governor Matt Blunt (R-MO) is out of the state.

In addition to the mobilization of the citizen-soldiers, the Missouri Department of Corrections has sent 93 prisoners from correctional institutions around the state to affected counties to help with sandbagging operations. The inmates chosen are minimum-security inmates who are carefully screened and usually near the end of their sentences.