CHARLESTON—People who have been displaced by the Project Flood of 2011, the man-made breach of the Birds Point levee May 2 on the Mississippi River, are living wherever they can until the land in the spillway can be reclaimed.
“Most of them are staying with relatives,” said Brandy Crisel, a Sunday School teacher at Wyatt Baptist Church. “In the Wyatt community, several people have opened up vacant homes for them to move into temporarily. There are some that I think have a place to stay that are choosing not to stay with family. They’re just self-reliant. There’s a family that’s staying in a camper for the time being.”
Virginia Wimberly, wife of pastor Ted Wimberly at New Bethel Baptist Church, described those who live in Mississippi County as very self-sufficient.
“These people are independent,” she said. “The families help take care of them.”
Her husband went a step further, calling the local citizens “experts at bouncing back. They know how to do that, and they will. They’ll make it. They’ll bounce back, just like they’ve always done.
“I listen to these people that farm back there, and some of them live back there, and a couple of them have said rather flatly this (blowing a hole in the levee with explosives) is something that had to be done. That’s as far as they go with it. We’re most grateful that nobody died because of it.”
Ruth Ann Feezor, a member of New Bethel, agreed.
“No lives were lost, and that was a blessing from God,” she said. “Human life cannot be replaced, but other things can be. It was a decision that was made, and maybe if it was made in another way, it might not have been as devastating, but who knows? If they had let the water run over on its own, who knows what would have happened? But that decision was made by them, and it sacrificed a lot of land, but yet we have to wait and see what good comes out of it, too.”
Her husband, Jack, is a former mayor of Charleston who owns two houses in the spillway that are “pretty well beat up and shot.” When he inspected his property, he saw a lot of mud at the shop. His two tenants are also pretty shook up about the whole turn of events.
“It kind of put a hardship on them,” he said. “They need some help.”
He said it will take years for the local economy to recover from the flood.
“If you don’t get the levees fixed, you cannot spend a lot of money because the river will be right back,” he said. “It may take years to fix the levee. They’ve got to put the front line levee back before you could ever spend any money in the spillway, in my opinion.”
ALLEN PALMERI/associate editor apalmeri@mobaptist.org