By John Branston and Kathy Finn
MEMPHIS/NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The swollen Mississippi River broke an all-time record level at Natchez, Mississippi, on Wednesday -- 10 days before its expected crest in the southern city.
The level of the largest river in North America reached 58.37 feet at Natchez on Wednesday afternoon, according to the National Weather Service, over the record of 58.04 feet in 1937. The river is expected to crest at 64 feet on May 21.
So far, levees along the river are holding, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"We're continuing to watch and wait and monitor the situation," said Jim Pogue, a Corps spokesman. "Everything is performing as we had hoped."
The flood, the result of weeks of rain plus melt from an unusually snowy winter, has resulted in the evacuations of thousands of people along the river and its tributaries and is expected to submerge 3 million acres of farmland in Mississippi, Tennessee and Arkansas alone.
In Mississippi, 16 casinos have been closed along the river and two more in Vicksburg were being monitored, said Allen Godfrey, deputy director of the Mississippi Gaming Commission.
The closures have put 13,000 employees temporarily out of work and will result in a financial hit for the local and state governments, which draw $19.7 million a month from casino boats.
Plans also were underway to protect pets and livestock from the rising waters. A 300-animal shelter in Natchez began accepting evacuees' pets on Wednesday, while the Vicksburg City Shelter moved out all its animals and closed in anticipation of flooding, according to state emergency officials.
TOURISM DRAW?
Vicksburg and Natchez city officials said most tourist attractions remain open and won't be affected. Connie Taunton, the Natchez tourism director even touted views of the historic flood as a tourism draw.
"We sit high up on a 200-foot bluff," said Taunton. "We are high and dry. If people want to come to Natchez and see a historic event... there is no better place to see it."
Downstream, the Corps was preparing to open a second Louisiana spillway, the Morganza, to ease the flooding threat to New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The Bonnet Carre spillway near New Orleans was opened on Monday for the first time since 2008.
In Mississippi, residents were bracing for expected record crests at Vicksburg on May 19 and Natchez on May 21 and authorities were warning that up to 5,000 Mississippi residents may be forced to evacuate.
Communities without levees north and south of Vicksburg, Mississippi, already were inundated.
Thunderstorms, possibly severe, are expected Thursday night into Friday, which could bring another inch of rain into the area.
Since the Mississippi River flood of 1927 that killed some 1,000 people, improvements have been made in flood control with the building of dams and levees, reservoirs and floodways. Those fortifications have held all along the river this year.
U.S. officials expect to open three of the river's floodways for the first time in history to relieve flooding that has been breaking or challenging records set during historic floods in 1927 and 1937 on the Lower Mississippi.
Melt from the winter saturated many areas of the Midwest and fed near-record water levels. Problems were compounded in southern Illinois where the rain-swollen Ohio River flowed into the Mississippi from the east.
The river at Memphis, Tennessee, crested about a foot below the record Tuesday, and if it's going down at all, it's going down "very slowly," said Steve Shular, spokesman for the Shelby County Office of Preparedness.
"We've got a lot of work before us," he said.
Bob Nations, Shelby County Emergency Management director, said high water and a "hazardous environment" are going to be facts of life in Memphis for some time.
"This baby is not as ugly as it could have been but it's still ours to raise," Nations said.
(Additional reporting by Tim Ghianni and Colleen Jenkins; Writing by Mary Wisniewski; Editing by Jerry Norton and Sofina Mirza-Reid)
