Locals braced for mini tsunami following extreme flood prevention blast.
Flames shot up and a loud boom was heard on Monday as the U.S. government blew a hole in a Mississippi River flood levee in a bid to save several towns in Illinois and Kentucky from being inundated.
A witness said water began to pour out of the hole after the explosion and is expected to eventually flood some 52,600 hectares (130,000 acres) of farmland in Missouri in order to spare the towns.
The deliberate destruction of the levee after nightfall and during a driving rain, ended days of debate and legal wrangling over how to cope with the rising flood waters of the Mississippi and nearby Ohio river.
Carlin Bennett, a commissioner in the rural Missouri county that will bear the brunt of the flooding, estimated the U.S. government action will cause $1 billion in property damage.
“It’s going to be like a mini tsunami through here,” he said. “We can’t really imagine it right now.”
The state of Missouri petitioned all the way to the Supreme Court in an unsuccessful attempt to stop the action. The states of Illinois and Kentucky opposed Missouri, joining the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in pushing for destruction of the levee in hopes of saving several towns in their states.
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