The Daily Blog

Mississippi River Could Crest At Memphis, Tennessee Sooner Than Predicted.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Forecasters say the Mississippi River could crest late Monday at Memphis – hours sooner than previously predicted – but the mayor says the city’s ready for it.

Mayor AC Wharton said that despite the tightened timeframe, he’s confident that precautions such as door-to-door warnings have prepared the city.

“We don’t have as much time, but fortunately we’re ready for it,” Wharton told The Early Show on CBS Monday.

To the South, authorities in Louisiana stepped up their preparations by opening floodgates at a spillway northwest of New Orleans to take pressure off levees in populated areas. Inmates were also being moved from a prison near Baton Rouge.

The Memphis mayor said disasters such as Katrina have shown that you can’t simply get the word out by issuing warnings on TV. Authorities spent the weekend knocking on doors to tell a couple hundred people that they should abandon their homes before they are swamped by waters from the rising Mississippi. Wharton said officials are returning to some houses multiple times.

“Door-to-door is a key thing that we’re doing,” he said, adding there are stepped up patrols to prevent looting in areas where people have left their homes behind.

Forecaster Joe Lowery of the National Weather Service office in Memphis said it looks like the river is starting to level out and could crest as soon as Monday night, at or near 48 feet (14.63 meters). Forecasters had previously predicted the crest would come Tuesday.

Memphis residents have been abandoning low-lying homes for days as the dangerously surging river threatened to crest just shy of the 48.7-foot (14.84-meter) record, set by a devastating 1937 flood.

The swollen river has swamped houses in Memphis and threatens to consume many more, but its rise has been slow enough that some people were clinging to their normal lives just a bit longer.

Richard Gordon, 70, was walking his two dogs near a convenience store in South Memphis. He said doesn’t live in an evacuation area but he has friends who do.

“I’m not frustrated or anything. I’m just waiting for this water to go away,” he said Monday.

In all, residents in more than 1,300 homes have been told to go, and some 370 people were staying in shelters.

But while some evacuated, others came as spectators. At Beale Street, the famous thoroughfare known for blues music, dozens gawked and snapped photos as water pooled at the end of the road. Traffic was heavy downtown on a day the streets would normally be quiet.

The river is “probably the biggest tourist attraction in Memphis,” said Scott Umstead, who made the half-hour drive from Collierville with his wife and their three children.

Col. Vernie Reichling, Army Corps of Engineers commander for the Memphis district, said the homes in most danger of flooding are in areas not protected by levees or floodwalls, including near Nonconnah Creek and the Wolf and Loosahatchie rivers.

About 150 Corps workers were walking along levees and monitoring performance of pump stations along what Reichling called the “wicked” Mississippi. “There should be no concern for any levees to fail,” he said in a downtown park on a bluff overlooking the river.

For Cedric Blue, the flooding in his south Memphis neighborhood near the overflowing Nonconnah Creek is a source of frustration and anger.

Blue, 39, has watched as the water engulfed three homes on his street, including that of an older woman who had to be rescued in a boat because she had refused to leave. Blue fears the rising water will ruin his house and his belongings while washing away a lifetime of memories that were created there.

Sunday afternoon, a garbage can floated in the high water near his house. Some feet away, the water had reached more than halfway up a yellow “No Outlet” street sign.

He became emotional talking about how he has about 7 feet of water in his backyard and less than a foot inside the house, which his mother owns. They were in the middle of a remodeling project when the flood hit.

Blue said he wants the city, county or the federal government to give him a hotel voucher so he does not have to go to a shelter.

“I just want a new life and relocation,” Blue said. “I would like the elected officials to come down here to see this with their own eyes and see what we’re going through.”

Flood waters were about a half-mile (800 meters) from the Beale Street’s world-famous nightspots, which are on higher ground.

The river already reached record levels in some areas upstream, thanks to heavy rains and snowmelt. It spared Kentucky and northwest Tennessee any catastrophic flooding and no deaths have been reported there, but some low lying towns and farmland along the banks of the river have been inundated.

And there’s tension farther south in the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana, where the river could create a slow-developing disaster.

There’s so much water in the Mississippi that the tributaries that feed into it are also backed up, creating some of the worst flood problems so far.

Downriver in Louisiana, the Army Corps of Engineers began opening the first floodgates at the Bonnet Carre spillway about 30 miles northwest of New Orleans. Workers pulled restraining devices off 28 of the spillway’s 350 gates, and the corps said it will monitor river levels before deciding to open more.

It’s the 10th time the spillway has opened since the structure was completed in 1931.

The corps also has asked for permission to open the key Morganza spillway north of Baton Rouge. Officials warned residents that even if it were opened, residents could expect water 5 to 25 feet (1.5 to 7.5 meters) deep over parts of seven parishes. Some of Louisiana’s most valuable farmland is expected to be inundated.

Officials also began moving prisoners from the Angola state penitentiary, north of Baton Rouge. Fewer than 200 with medical problems were taken out on buses and vans, and more inmates inside the prison were being moved to less vulnerable buildings in the complex bordered on three sides by the Mississippi.

Engineers say it is unlikely any major metropolitan areas will be inundated as the water pushes downstream over the next week or two. Nonetheless, officials are cautious.

Since the flood of 1927, a disaster that killed hundreds, Congress has made protecting the cities on the lower Mississippi a priority, spending billions to fortify cities with floodwalls and carve out overflow basins and ponds – a departure from the “levees-only” strategy that led to the 1927 disaster.

As Chaos Reigns, Foreigners Advised to Leave Egypt.

CAIRO - Foreign governments stepped up their warnings about travel to Egypt, with several urging their nationals to evacuate as soon as possible, further fueling uncertainty over where the Arab nation is headed after nearly a week of mass protests.

The fears of foreign tourists mirrored those of many Egyptians. Dozens with the means to do so rented jets or hopped aboard their own planes in a mad dash that did little to boost confidence in the future of a country that, until a week ago, had been viewed as a pillar of stability in a restive region. Those leaving included businessmen and celebrities.

The American, Swiss, Turkish and Dutch governments issued advisories encouraging nationals already in the country to leave and telling those who planned trips to Egypt to reconsider. A growing number of governments - including China, France, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Russia and Poland - warned against travel to most parts, if not all of Egypt. Arab nations, including Iraq, either sent in jets to take their citizens home, or offered to do so.

“If I had a visa to anywhere, I’d join them. But that’s not going to happen,” said Mohammed Khaled, a 28-year-old Egyptian doctor. “Right now, I’d settle for a gun, but I can’t even find one of those.”Surging lawlessness on the streets after the much-reviled police essentially melted away has prompted neighbors to form armed patrols. But crowds of men armed with shovels, sticks, clubs, chains, guns and the occasional whips and chains, do little to project an image of stability.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Fox News Sunday that Washington had authorized “voluntary departure, which means that we will assist American citizens to leave Egypt.”

The unrest is sure to affect Egypt’s vital tourism sector, at least in the short-run. Tourism accounts for about 5 to 6 percent of GDP, making it one of the top four sources of foreign revenue for the country.

But the unrest also threatens to unravel an economy that officials had proudly pointed to one of the few to withstand the global financial meltdown.International oil companies and other Western firms began to weigh evacuating their employees’ families - a move that may be mirrored by international schools catering to those workers.

One such company was oil giant BP PLC. Spokesman Robert Wine said the company, which has operated in Egypt for 40 years, is “working on what we need to do, and whether we need to bring the families out.”

But other businessmen weren’t waiting for formal marching orders.”We left behind a country with no order or security whatsoever,” Mehmet Buyukocak, who worked in Egypt for six years, told Turkish news channel NTV upon arriving in Istanbul’s airport. “People do as they wish. … The army does not interfere - they are just watching.”

“Even if Mubarak resigns, it will be chaos taking his place,” he said, adding that there are other Turks who said they will remain in Egypt. “I pray God helps them all.”

Even before the images of roving bands of thugs and neighborhood patrols were etched in their minds, tourists were thronging to Cairo’s international airport as Mubarak faced the gravest challenge in his 30-year rule.

Many came without reservations, only to find a growing number of flights canceled, delayed or suspended. National carrier EgyptAir canceled or delayed 25 flights Sunday because of a crew shortage.

Unable to fly out, the passengers’ ranks swelled with the addition of others arriving in Cairo after a 4 p.m. curfew goes into effect.

An airport that was the pride of the government took on the appearance of a marble-floored refugee camp. Airport officials said some travelers who had been there for several days came down with diarrhea, and were treated by doctors at the facility.

A growing number of Arab countries arranged for additional flights on larger jets to evacuate their citizens, as did a smattering of other nations including Azerbaijan and Turkey.

Iraq, which has endured more than seven years of chaos of its own, offered to fly out any of its citizens who wanted to escape the mayhem. “It will be free of charge,” Transportation Ministry spokesman Aqeel Hadi Kawthar told The Associated Press.Egyptian pop star Amr Diab, whose hits include “Rag’een” or “Returning,” jetted off to London with his family aboard his private plane, said an airport official, speaking on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to brief the media.

Several other celebrities and businessmen also left, raising to at least 64 the number of private planes to take off over the past two days.

The impact on the Red Sea resorts, favored by Europeans, was still negligible. Some travel companies said those destinations remained unaffected, even though some governments, such as Poland’s, began expanding their travel advisories to include those areas.

For some prospective visitors, it wasn’t worth the risk.

Tulin Sezer, a 39-year-old math teacher from Berlin, said she and her two friends had just decided to cancel their planned trip to the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

“It just doesn’t feel right to go on vacation in Egypt, if the people who live there are not happy,” Sezer said. “If people are dying, it is weird to go there as a tourist.”

Here Comes More Snow, From Deep South to New England.

Winter storm watches and warnings are in effect from the Deep South to New England for another significant winter storm system, one that will spread snow, sleet, rain and strong thunderstorms along its path during the next couple of days.

Snow amounts might reach a foot in the hardest-hit areas in the mountains of West Virginia, northwestern New Jersey, southeastern New York and southern and eastern parts of New England, including Boston, Hartford and Providence. The major cities farther to the south along the Eastern Seaboard will be spared the highest accumulation of snow, but even there, snow and ice are likely to produce travel delays by the time the storm winds down.

A number of storms this winter have brought the worst conditions to the Eastern Seaboard, but a slightly more inland track, combined with milder air from the south and east, will shift the focus of the current storm farther inland, except across New England, where enough cold air is expected to remain in place to result in mainly snow.The accumulating snow will begin as far south as northern Mississippi, northern Alabama and much of Tennessee this afternoon and tonight as cold air pours into the ongoing storm. Rain will change to heavy, wet snow, accumulating as much as a few inches.

The storm will ride northward through the mid-Atlantic region on Wednesday and through New England from Wednesday night through Thursday.

Washington, D.C., New York City and even most likely Philadelphia will experience a complete changeover to rain, with sleet and rain possibly mixing with the snow in Boston for a time. Regardless, the National Weather Service is forecasting 8 to 12 inches of snow in Boston.For New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, the rain will change back to snow before the storm ends Wednesday night or Thursday, resulting in slippery roads. Any accumulation of snow will be light as far south as Washington, but a few inches of snow could quickly pile up in New York City.

The heaviest snow will occur where it will remain cold enough for snow during the entire event, and the combination of snow and wind will be fairly intense from northwestern New Jersey to eastern Maine as the storm begins to intensify on its northeastward track.

Along the Gulf Coast, the storm system will bring much-needed rain in the form of showers and thunderstorms. The thunderstorms, however, have the potential to produce damaging winds and isolated tornadoes, mainly across Florida this afternoon and tonight.

While a northwesterly wind following the storm will bring colder air into the Northeast and mid-Atlantic during the latter part of this week, it will not be as bitterly cold as it was last weekend through Monday, when numerous locations had low temperatures well below zero.

However, another bitter blast of Arctic air is likely to arrive during the first part of next week.