A plain, hand-lettered poster tacked to the wooden facade of Jack and Jolene Hiland’s Sky Ride Inn could easily be a rallying cry for Midwestern businesses scuttled by what has been called “The Flood of the Century.”
“Yes! We’re open!” declares the placard defiantly.
Never mind that those patronizing the cafe must enter through the kitchen in the rear. Normally Jack and Jolene’s place is a prudent 200 yards from the Mississippi, but last week the front door was separated from the swollen river by the thickness of a few sandbags.
Like thousands of other businesses along the Mississippi and its swollen tributaries, the Sky Ride Inn, which specializes in catfish and carp, is making the best of a bad thing.
“What are you going to do?” asked Jack Hiland, as he rolled freshly caught Mississippi catfish in batter. “Are you going to stop living . . . working? You gotta keep on living . . . you gotta keep on working.”
Less than a quarter mile from Jack Hiland’s kitchen, the sleek, 20-year-old Bayview Bridge spanning the Mississippi stands abandoned, made unsafe by the collapsed Fabius levee near its entrance on the Missouri side.
It probably won’t be open for another month-which is about how long the current flood stage is predicted to last by the Army Corps of Engineers.
That means nothing is moving across the river on U.S. Highway 24. And for this town of 40,000, that means big economic problems.
Officials say the bridge normally carries one-fourth of the area’s people to jobs and supports about one-third of its economy-figures that will amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in lost wages and sales and increased business expenses.
Granted, Quincy’s problems represent only a small portion of the damage caused by 1 1/2 months of flooding in the Midwest. Federal and state officials say the region’s rampaging rivers have killed at least 31 people, caused $10 billion in damage, left 17,000 square miles of farmland underwater and damaged more than 22,000 homes.
Nobody is exactly sure how the Midwestern flooding will affect the already sluggish national economy, though most economists predict that for most Americans it will be an imperceptible blip.
Some, like David Jones of Aubrey Langston & Co., predict that when it’s all said and done, it will add about one-quarter of a percentage point to the consumer price index. Others suggest the floods could slow the national economy in the third quarter to a 2.6 percent annual rate of growth instead of the 2.8 percent predicted by Clinton administration economists.
“The economy should recover from the flood rather quickly in the fourth quarter,” Jones added.
But for this historic river town and others, such as Hannibal, Mo., about 30 miles to the south, the economic damage will be felt for a long time.
For these communities the Big River, which is what the Algonquin Indian word “Mississippi” means, is a vital artery essential for survival.
The Mississippi may still trigger an irresistible sense of 19th Century romanticism in those who visit its valleys, cross its bridges and read the classic novels of Mark Twain, its most famous chronicler.
But to those who live along it, the river evokes much more pragmatic emotions. To them it means life itself.
Not only does it carry the region’s commerce, including agricultural products, manufactured goods, livestock and people, it is a major source of hydraulic power, irrigation, recreation and tourism.
Now, for the time being, the river’s fickle life-sustaining energy has turned deadly, at a considerable cost.
Last week, with the river still cresting at points downstream from here, the Army Corps of Engineers reported that there are more than 7,000 barges containing $1.9 billion in cargo immobilized on the Mississippi from St. Paul to St. Louis.
The upper Mississippi has been closed to commercial traffic since June 26, and it may be another month before the barges begin to move.
In the meantime, said Tom Seals, St. Louis port captain for American Commercial Barge Lines, “all we can do is sit and wait.”
That means losing money-lots of money, say industry officials, who estimate that barge companies are losing about $3 million in revenue each day the Mississippi is shut down.
“We only make money when we are moving,” said Seals.
And it’s not just barge operators who are losing money. In St. Louis alone 3,200 workers who load, unload and clean river barges are out of work.
Jefferson Barracks Marine Service, which repairs and cleans boats and barges, then moves them in huge flotillas up and down the river, has already laid off 35 of its 120 employees.
“We’ll make it, but its going to hurt like hell,” George Foster, Jefferson’s owner, told reporters. “Right now all we can do is drink coffee and wait.”
Back upstream in Quincy, where the battle to save a critical levee that would have kept the Bayview Bridge open was lost, people are also waiting-and tallying up the cost of battling the river that people here confess they both love and hate.
“The damned thing has a mind all its own, you know,” said Ted Clyborne who has lived along the river for 51 of his 72 years. “You have to take it as it is. Sometimes it’s calm and predictable and sometimes it’s just as mean as mean can be. It can make you rich, but it can damn well make you poor, too. That’s life on the Mississippi.”
Right now there is no doubt the Mississippi is in one of its mean moods.
And for Quincy the cost of that mood swing is mounting fast.
City comptroller Dan Maier says the city has already spent $1.2 million in its fight to control the river-about $500,000 of that for sand and sandbags.
Mayor Chuck Scholz is quick to add that the city is spending about $100,000 a day to keep the Mississippi from doing any more harm. That figure, he said, could probably double or triple by the time cleanup costs are factored in once the river level drops.
In addition, Adams County, of which Quincy is the county seat, has spent another $1.2 million on flood-control equipment, labor and materials, and that figure is likely to triple by the time the flood waters recede, said county engineer Richard Klusmeyer.
“After you people (in the national media) leave, the real story for us folks who live along the river begins,” said Ned Krantz, whose farm near Ashburn, Mo., was caught between the rising Mississippi and the Salt River. “That’s when we really find out how much all this is going to cost us.”
Downstream in Hannibal, where Samuel Langhorne Clemens-later to be known as Mark Twain-grew up, there is little doubt about the cost of the flood of 1993.
Even though a new 34-foot high, mile-long brick levee constructed in 1992 by the Corps of Engineers is keeping the Mississippi from pouring into the old river town’s 10-block historic district, Twain’s boyhood home and the Becky Thatcher house on Hill Street are mostly empty of tourists.
“Business is off about 75 percent,” said Henry Sweets, curator of the Mark Twain Museum, where, among other artifacts, one of the author’s cachet white suits is on display. “The media has everybody around the country thinking we’re under water, so nobody is coming.”
While some of the dramatic television footage and newspaper photographs may convey that erroneous image, that’s not the only reason for Hannibal’s significant drop in tourist traffic.
The fact is, it’s hard to get to Hannibal these days. The Hannibal bridge linking Illinois and Missouri is closed, it’s almost impossible to drive to Hannibal from neighboring Iowa and many of the Missouri state roads leading to Hannibal have been washed out.
“It’s a ghost town,” said Hannibal Mayor Richard Schwartz, referring to the historic riverfront area where Mark Twain was born in 1835. “We usually have maybe 800 to 1,000 tourists a day in that part of town. Right now we’re lucky to be getting 100.”
Tourism is critical to Hannibal, says Schwartz. More than 1,500 of the town’s 18,000 residents are employed by the industry, and it brings in $14 million a year in revenues.
More damaging are the closed bridges linking Missouri and Illinois, he adds.
“It’s economic devastation for the entire area,” said Schwartz, referring to the empty trestles.
Some 1,000 Hannibal residents work in Quincy, but because every bridge between Burlington, Iowa, and St. Louis is shut down, there is no way for them to get to their jobs.
The last main artery crossing the Mississippi is at Davenport, Iowa, where Interstate 80 spans the river.
But downtown Davenport and portions of the other Quad Cities are also inundated with river water.
Using ferries to move across the Mississippi is out, say Corps of Engineers officials. The river is moving so fast (about four times faster than the water cascading over Niagara Falls) that trying to cross the river with a ferry could be life-threatening.
“We just want to do something so we can keep earning a living,” said Mickey Chapman, a trucker from Louisiana, Mo. “Nobody I know wants anything for free. We just want some help so we can survive.”
Only a fraction of the damage caused by the flood is covered by insurance, however. So not much help will be coming from the insurance industry.
Indeed, Gary Kerney, director of catastrophe services for the Property Claims Service division of American Insurance Services Group, estimates that total insured losses in the flooded region will be about $280 million.
A $2.85 billion disaster-relief bill approved Tuesday should help.
But farmers like Ned Krantz aren’t exactly energized by it.
“When these (aid packages) get announced back in Washington they look like an ocean, but by the time they reach us little people out here, they’re like a trickle of spit,” he said.
Key provisions of the package include $815 million in direct aid to individuals and families. That aid includes a maximum of $11,900 per family for temporary housing and repairs.
It also provides $1.15 billion in crop disaster money. Payments are made on losses in excess of 35 percent of established crop yield and 40 percent if the farmer had no crop insurance. The bill doesn’t fully fund disaster payments. Instead, farmers will get 50 cents on each dollar to which they would be entitled under a formula established by the 1990 Farm Bill.
Another $45 million is available for watershed and farmland restoration and cleanup. Those who have lost jobs because of the floods will qualify for $43.5 million set aside for temporary employment in flood cleanup, repair and public-health and safety services.
“Whatever the government does, it won’t be enough,” said Krantz.
“But right now we’ll take what we can get. We’re going to be paying for this mess for a long, long time.”
