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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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December
2007
Volume 13
- Number 3 |
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Report on personal experience with the Midwest Floods of 1993 By Kristen Mulligan The 1993 Midwest Floods occured May - September 1993
and caused major and/or record flooding in North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska,
Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Illinois. Damages
caused by the Midwest Floods of 1993 totaled about $15 billion and were so
extensive that “534 countries were eventually declared federal disaster areas,
including the entire state of Iowa.” Roughly 50 people were killed
and about 55,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, forcing thousands of people
to evacuate when hundreds of levees along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers
failed. At least 75 towns went completely underwater. The entire towns
of Valmeyer, IL and Rhineland, MO had to be relocated to higher ground.
About 15 million acres of farmland were flooded, causing some of them to
be unusable for many years after. In addition, numerous sewage treatment
and water treatment plants were destroyed: http://www.redcross.org/news/ds/floods/030806midwest93.html.
As a native of Chicago, I can remember the impact the floods of 1993 had on Northeast Illinois. My home and many in the surrounding neighborhoods flooded. Transportation was severely impacted. Flooding of viaducts on major highways forced roads to be closed. Barge traffic on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers was stopped for almost 2 months. Several bridges over the rivers were also closed. Ten commercial airports were flooded. All railroad traffic in the Midwest was halted. As Chicago is a major railroad hub this impacted hundreds of shipping schedules http://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/floods/papers/oh_2/great.htm In the nine states that were affected by the flooding, many experienced an unusual period of sustained rainfall. Average days of rainfall amounted to 20 as opposed to the usual 8-9 days. From June through August 1993, “rainfall totals surpassed 12 inches across the eastern Dakotas, southern Minnesota, eastern Nebraska, Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana. More than 24 inches of rain fell on central and northeastern Kansas, northern and central Missouri, most of Iowa, southern Minnesota, and southeastern Nebraska, with up to 38.4 inches in east-central Iowa” http://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/floods/papers/oh_2/great.htm Usually wetlands mitigate the effects of flooding by temporarily storing floodwaters and thus lessening the effects on agricultural and residential areas. The increasing loss of wetlands in the Midwest, however, increased the severity of the flood. As river levels rose high above normal levels, “over 1,000 flood warnings and statements, five times the normal, were issued to notify the public of their status” http://water.usgs.gov/nwsum/WSP2425/flood.html Some areas along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers took almost 100 days to drop below flood levels. The destruction was so great that “it prompted the fifth largest response in the history of the American Red Cross, which spent roughly $44 million to help families recover” http://www.redcross.org/news/ds/floods/030806midwest93.html FEMA has released a collection of stories “The 1993 Great Midwest Flood: Voices 10 Years Later” documenting what effective mitigation, primarily flood insurance, can do to prevent future flood disasters http://www.fema.gov/business/nfip/voices.shtm |