Tagged: Missouri River Flooding 2011

Levee Break Sends Releases Torrents of Water

Crews are racing to build up a protective wall to keep floodwaters from reaching a small Iowa town after the swollen Missouri River punched a massive hole in the main levee that protects the community.

Two levees in northwest Missouri ruptured yesterday, sending water over rural farmland.

Updated 3:04 p.m. with changed breach size in Holt County.

Authorities in northwest Missouri say a Missouri River levee has breached in Holt County.

The Holt County breach is about 225-feet wide through a levee about five miles west of the town of Big Lake.

Holt County Clerk Kathy Kunkel said the breach is pushing water onto area agricultural land, and there are no current plans to fill the breach because it would not be safe.

Updated at 2:07 p.m. with more details - new version of story from Associated Press.

Updated at 12:09 p.m. - see photos of the levee breach on the Atchison County 911/Emergency Management Facebook page.

The rising Missouri River has ruptured two levees in northwest Missouri, sending torrents of flood waters over
rural farmland toward the Iowa town of Hamburg and the Missouri state park and resort of Big Lake.