Kay Jones
AC360° Staff

“House For Sale: Riverfront Property”

That’s the first sign I noticed after we pulled into Grafton, Illinois, today. Pretty typical sign, but in a not so typical situation.

The Mississippi River has risen to the bottom of the gate where the sign is hanging, about 200 yards from where the river usually stops.

Today, reporter Gary Tuchman, our CNN crew, and I hung out with the owners of Jimbo’s General Store & Hardware, Jim and Linda Tolley. They say the flooding so far is not as bad as it was in 1993, but as we were wrapping up our day with them, a new predicition on Wednesday’s river crest came in… and it’s another 5-6 inches higher than what they were told yesterday.

While Gary and our cameraman, Dave, were taking a boat tour of the area with Jim, his wife, Linda, and I chatted about the river’s rise. She told me that they’ve been experiencing high water levels for six weeks and that it was only a matter of time before the town saw the flooding.

She also said that Grafton isn’t protected by a levee, so she was expecting some water. Just not this much.

David Mattingly
AC360° Correspondent

All roads to Gulfport, IL lead to nowhere. They all dead-end into Mississippi flood waters. The closest we could get to the inundated Village using roads in Illinois was a police roadblock that is SEVEN MILES from town. That might tell you how close this river town of about 200 was to disaster when the flood waters started to rise.

But people lived here comforted by a levee system that the government said would protect them from a 100 year flood. No one was required to have federal flood insurance. Only 28 property owners had it. Some now say they were misled about the risks they were taking and that the chance of catastrophic flooding was miscalculated.

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Drew Griffin reports on the threat to East St. Louis, Ill., posed by the floodwaters of the mighty Mississippi.

Drew Griffin
Special Investigations Unit

East Saint Louis, Illinois is not prepared for a major flood.

Fortunately it looks like the city won’t have to be. So many levees have been topped upstream, the pressure is now off this economically depressed town. But what is surprising to me, so many years now after Katrina, is that East St. Louis has not learned the lesson of New Orleans.

The levees that protect this city are not strong enough to withstand a major flood. The Army Corp. of Engineers is in the process of decertifying the levees, which means the Corp. does not have confidence they will hold. And yet the mayor and city manager seem only mildly concerned.

In fact when I visited the city manager in his office yesterday it was apparent he had not even been keeping up with the flood forecasts for his city…. Worse yet, we actually took him to a spot where he was surprised to see seepage in one of his levees, the initial warning stage of failure.

What the Mayor and city manager told me is Congress and the state and basically someone else needs to get busy fixing their levee.

Sound familiar?

CNN's Gary Tuchman reports on how one town is bracing for the fury of the Mississippi floods.

I spent Thursday night watching people who literally have the power to save an American town.

Hundreds of men, women, and children were filling sandbags at the high school in the small town of Winfield, Missouri.

Sandbags can, and do stop floodwaters from breaching levees. So the work these people are doing, while strenuous, is incredibly valuable and rewarding.

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David M. Reisner
360° Digital Producer

The Mississippi River claimed new tracts of farmland overnight north of St. Louis, Missouri, as officials warned that the swollen river could breach four or five more levees today around the Gateway City. About 11 levees have been breached in the St. Louis area since the flooding began.

When you hear the term ‘levee breach,’ what does that mean exactly? A levee breach can come from any number of scenarios. I put together a slideshow to show you all the different ways a levee can fail. Take a look:

Photos taken from CNN Photojournalist Steve Coppin on Blackhawk Tour in the Quincy, IL area

Karin Matz
CNN Producer

Someone once told me the best way to get perspective in life is to try to see yourself from 1000 feet above ground.

That was particularly true this morning. I got a call at 7:30 am asking if I could be at the airport in Quincy, Illinois by 8 a.m. to go up in a Blackhawk helicopter to tour the flood zone. I said, “Sure.”

I been driving along the Mississippi River the past few days seeing the flood damage at eye level, from Burlington, Iowa to Quincy. I’ve watched volunteers sand bag for hours, talked to police and seen homes and farms destroyed by the mammouth Mississipi. But I didn’t really have perspective until today from the bird’s eye view.

I and photojournalist Steve Coppin met up with members of the Illinois National Guard 1st Battalion 106 Aviation Regiment out of Decatur, IL. Five minutes later we were up in the UH60 Blackhawk…

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A picnic shelter at the Quincy River Front park shows the water level rising from the Mississippi River near Quincy, Ill.

Karin Matz
CNN Producer

At Shaffer farm, just north of Quincy, Illinois, folks have been sandbagging for a week.

So far the levees are holding but there’s major concern. About 100 volunteers are working 18-hour days.

“The levees ain’t gonna save themselves!” one volunteer told us

Local Menonites are volunteering. The Red Cross is providing meals.

We are now following a police officer down to a high water area. He took amazing pictures of deer in the water. I’m going to look for the deer, too.

Air National Guard members help fill sandbags along the Mississippi River in Quincy, Ill. today.

Cherly Waterman
United Way of Adams Co.

• Sandbagging here in Quincy Illinois started Friday the 13th
• Volunteers start 6am and the last volunteer leaves around 9
• More than 500 volunteered today
• More than 4,000 volunteered this past weekend
• They’re filling 5000 sandbags an hour
• That means more than million sandbags stacked since Friday

Piles of water destroyed items line the streets in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Tuesday.

Gary Tuchman BIO
AC360° Correspondent

There is a song in the famous musical “The Music Man” called “Iowa Stubborn.” In that song, there is this line: “There’s an Iowa kind of special chip on the shoulder attitude we’ve never been without that we recall.” I think about that right now because, if you’ll allow me to generalize, the truth is just so much the opposite.

I have spent several days now with Iowans who are suffering greatly after floodwaters pulverized their homes, their neighborhoods, and their lives. Despite that, they are incredibly friendly and happy to see journalists like me wander into their lives.

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Sandbaggers in Gulfport, Illinios on Monday.

Dan Simon BIO
CNN Correspondent

The weather is beautiful in Gulfport, Illinois; this time of year the sunsets are gorgeous. That’s why it’s so strange to see this town in the middle of a natural disaster. I literally thought I was staring at a lake on the outskirts of town. It was actually a corn field submerged by the flooded Mississippi river. A breached levee began spilling water here about 4a on Tuesday. The agricultural impact in Gulfport and throughout the Midwest is astronomical. By the time the water recedes, it will be too late for farmers here to replant their crops, mostly corn and soybeans.

The fields may be drenched, but so far the homes are safe. But the river still hasn’t crested. That means water could soon be rolling through neighborhoods. People throughout the town are clearing out their basements, the first part of the house to flood. We also saw an effort to build a temporary levee. Crews are unloading truckloads of dirt behind people’s homes to block any rushing water. Success isn’t guaranteed. A few days ago in Des Moines, Iowa, we watched National Guard troops do the same thing, but the water plowed right through and flooded at least 20 homes.