By Dan Verbeck
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/kcur/local-kcur-975763.mp3
Rushville, MO – There is no way into Atchison, Kansas from neighboring Missouri. A three mile wide swath of flatland centered on U.S. Highway 59 is under water and still taking on more from the Missouri River. KCUR's Dan Verbeck got as close as he could to talk with people who are forced out of their homes.
The man in a grimy shirt and day's growth of beard is pointing off into the distance, saying--"The levee broke over here. It overtopped the levee and cut through the levee. " It's nearly a hundred degrees and he's trying to get back to his flooded home to recover a few things of value. His name is Robert Servaes.
Off a little-used road skirting barricades, Servaes and Tammy Dotson have a borrowed boat in back of their pickup. They were told by sheriff's deputies it was unsafe to go a half mile to their water-surrounded home of four years. It's on the west edge of Rushville, Missouri, three miles from Atchison, a mile from where the agricultural levee broke Monday afternoon.
Dotson knew exactly what the sound was when the rushing water thundered--"We could hear the roaring. We could hear the roaring of the water. And then it came over those railroad tracks and we could hear it roarin'."
Service says he watched through binoculars as the levee section of a hundred feet or so, collapsed. His description is matter of fact, "I saw it when it started folding over when it came over the top and it started bouncing up in the air. The Water started coming up in the air . It just started opening up." Servaes says it took five hours for the water to reach and surround his house.
The search now is for a place to rent, to live for weeks or longer, cheaper than a motel.
Parked by the Missouri river bluffs where Dotson and Servaes are waiting for permission to boat to their home, you can barely make out Atchison, three miles to the West.
It is three miles of water. it is water that separates Jeff Kuhnert from his house.
Outside the Post Office in the nearby town of Rushville, Kuhnert is picking up mail. He lives within blocks of the bridge over into Atchison. The daily drive to Benedictine College where he works normally takes less than 10 minutes. Now bridge and highway are closed and he has to drive via St. Joseph and back down the Kansas side of the river and it takes an hour.
There are at least two levee breaks near Atchison on the West, Kuhnert's home on the east. Some houses in his town of Winthrop Missouri are under water. His is nearly surrounded.
Kuhnert worries about levees holding up for months--"That's the scary thing right now. Even the big levees North of us holding back that much water for that length of time."
By "North of us," Kuhnert means between Atchison and St. Joseph.
Kuhnert might get reassurance from St. Joseph's Andrew Clements in the Public Works Department. He is an assistant director and a daily 'boss of flood control.' There's the Big federal levee in South St. Joseph and he refers to it--"I hope they all feel confident in the Levee because it is in good shape. And the Corps of Engineers has a 3 man crew looking at it every day."
Weaker farm levees are what worry. Water went over the top of one one June 30th, closer to Kansas City near Wolcott, Kansas and I-435.
Communities East and South of Atchison also have flooding down as far as the Iatan Power Plant near Weston. They include Bean Lake and Lewis and Clark Village at Sugar Lake, Missouri.