MASTERS OF DISASTER
“As you can see right now, the water’s still pretty high,” Army Corps of Engineers Col. Bill Hannan says as the Clem Miller II patrol boat cuts across the face of the Missouri River.
While leaving the riverbank on Lexington’s north side, the boat’s engine churns up white water and sends 3-foot waves rippling toward the shore, Hannan focuses his attention on the levee system battered by 2019’s early and later spring floods. The disaster caused more than $3 billion in damage from Nebraska and Iowa south into Missouri, including in southern Ray and Clay counties.
“From last year’s floods, the ground is still very saturated,” he says, heading east toward the Ike Skelton Bridge in southern Ray County. “So that’s why we still have a very high river. All that runoff has still been coming into the river.”
With water having no place to go, area waterways remain swollen, Hannan says.
In Richmond, Fishing River climbed into a few yards on the city’s north side after heavy rain in early June…