Workers keep battling floodwaters as the Mississippi begins to recede

Floodwaters along the Mississippi River keep the pressure on battered levees, with tension rising among those working non-stop each and every time it rains.

Brad Farber, supervisor of the St. Charles County American Red Cross Service Center, says much work has kept a vulnerable levee at Winfield in tact. Farber says it is believed the Pin Oak levee will hold. The Pin Oak levee is the secondary levee in Winfield, pressed into service when floodwaters broke through the primary levee. It is protecting about 100 homes. The US Army Corps of Engineers has been keeping a close watch on the Pin Oak levee ever since. Members of the National Guard have been helping volunteers pile sandbags on the levee to help it hold.

The National Weather Service has left unchanged its prediction the Mississippi River will crest late tomorrow or Saturday at 37.5 feet at Winfield. That would be just over two feet below the record flood of 1993. Even once the river crests, it will remain at 36 feet for a few days before it drops slowly, keeping a lot of pressure on the levees protecting Winfield, Clarksville and Elsberry.

Work by the National Guard is credited for saving a mobile home park in St. Charles. A sandbag operation fortified a levee north of the park. National Guard members have been deployed to West Alton to fill sandbags there. Officials have called for more volunteers to fill sandbags for the West Alton levee.

The Red Cross is asking for donations. The national disaster relief fund has been nearly depleted from response to major disaster this year.