The Great Flood of 1993

The Mississippi River will always have its own way;
no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise...
- Mark Twain in Eruption

In late June, days of heavy rain across the Northeastern United States sent rivers and streams spilling over their banks, creating some of the worst flooding ever to strike the region. The floods were blamed for at least a dozen deaths, forced close to a quarter of a million residents from their homes, and led to states of emergency in parts of Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

According to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, "The serious impact of this storm on the immediate and long-term economy of this region and the state represents a major hardship requiring a comprehensive federal, state and local partnership for effective recovery".

While the devastation caused by the flooding in June was extensive, it does not compare to what many experts consider one of the worst natural disasters in United States history.

The summer of 1993 will be remembered for what has been called the "Great USA Flood" or the "1993 Mississippi Flood". The unprecedented floods left much of the Mississippi River basin underwater from April 1 to September 30. Fifty people died and tens of thousands were evacuated. Many were forced from their homes for several months, and many more never returned to their homes. At least 10,000 homes were destroyed, and at least 75 communities were completed submerged by the floodwaters.

The main trunk of the Mississippi River is formed by the union of the northern branch of the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio Rivers. The basin stretches from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachian Mountains, and covers most of the Great Plains. The Mississippi River system is fed by water from thirty-one states and two Canadian provinces.

During the first half of 1993, the Midwest was soaked by unusually heavy rain, with some areas of the upper Mississippi recording one and a half times the normal rainfall from January to June. Parts of Kansas, Iowa and North Dakota received close to double the normal rainfall amount for the first half of the year.

The rain continued to fall well after the water had topped riverbanks and the levees designed to protect against flooding. More than one thousand levees were topped or failed, and with the saturated ground unable to absorb any more rain, the additional moisture had nowhere to go but into the already swollen waterways.

The floodwaters covered 400 thousand square miles across nine states. An estimated 15 million acres of farmland were swamped. Some of the richest farmland in the world was left unusable for several years. The damage from the flooding totaled $15 billion.

The 1993 Mississippi Flood, the flooding caused by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma, and the recent flooding in the Northeast are extreme examples of flooding; however, as the website of the National Flood Insurance Program puts it:


In all 50 states... on coasts, on mountains, along rivers, in the desert... in towns and cities of every size... floods happen.

The most important thing you can do to protect yourself from financial loss is to have flood insurance. Floods can also pose life-threatening risks to you and your family. So be smart. Be FloodSmart. Be prepared for anything nature sends your way.

Preparation is the best defense against suffering a devastating financial blow from floods. By visiting www.floodsmart.gov, you can take the steps needed to become FloodSmart, and you can learn from the experiences of those who have lived through some of the worst floods in recent memory.

SOURCE MATERIAL AND REFERENCES

1) Flood analysis: 1993 Mississippi Flood
Prof. Paul R. Baumann
Dept. of Geography
State University of New York
College at Oneonta
http://employees.oneonta.edu/baumanpr/geosat2/Flood_ Management/FLOOD_MANAGEMENT.htm

2) The Great USA Flood of 1993
Lee W. Larson
Chief, Hydrologic Research Laboratory
Office of Hydrology
NOAA/National Weather Service
http://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/floods/papers/oh_2/great.htm

3) http://www.twainquotes.com

4) NASA Earth Observatory
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/ images.php3?img_id=16881

5) FEMA
http://www.photolibrary.fema.gov/photolibrary/photo_search.do; jsessionid=9D77EE7FAE6903E0905A0F63644DDB9B