Mississippi State sweeps

Beginning of the word via television and the Internet is not enough for Memphis officials, who went from door to door warning a couple hundred people that they must leave their homes before they are flooded from the rising waters of the Mississippi River.

Memphis residents had to abandon low-lying homes in a few days, how dangerous it is Surging river threatened to cross 48 feet (14.63 meters) on Tuesday, just shy of 48.7 feet (14.84 meters) record set by the devastating floods in 1937.

Still others, like Shirley Woods watching the river just feet from her one-story house, but still keeps his life as normal, including the yard barbecue Sunday.

When she woke at dawn, she was ready to leave if the Mississippi were high enough, but she decided that she could at least celebrate Mother's Day with their families.

"I'll give him another day, and if it comes up much higher, we get here," said Woods.

Overflowing river has swamped homes in Memphis and threatens to consume a lot more, but its growth was slow enough that some people cling to a normal life just a little more time.

In general, residents of more than 1300 homes were told to go, and about 370 people lived in shelters.

But while some have been evacuated, while others came as spectators. In Beale Street, the famous street known for blues, tens gawked and snapped pictures as the water incorporated in the end of the road. The traffic was heavy in the city center on the day the streets are generally quiet.

River, probably the biggest tourist attraction in Memphis, "said Scott Umstead, who made a half-hour of Collierville with his wife and three children.

Col. Vernie Reichling, Army Corps of Engineers commander of the Memphis area, said most homes in flood hazard areas without levees or floodwalls, including about Nonconnah Creek and Wolf and Loosahatchie rivers.

About 150 workers walked along the dam body and monitor the performance of pumping stations on any Reichling called "evil" of Mississippi. "There should be nothing to do with any levees to fail," he said in the middle of the park on a bluff overlooking a river.

For Cedric Blue, floods in its south Memphis neighborhood near the crowded Nonconnah Creek is a source of frustration and anger.

Blue, 39, watched as the water engulfed three homes on his street, including an elderly woman who had to be rescued in a boat, because she refused to leave. Blue fears of rising water ruin your home and your property during the washing of the life of the memories that were created there.

Sunday afternoon, trash can float in water high in front of his home. Some meters, the water reached more than halfway to the yellow "No Way" road sign.

He became emotional talking about how he was about 7 feet of water in his yard and less than a foot in the house that his mother owns. They were in the middle of the renovation project, when the flood.

Blue said he wants city, county or federal government to give him a hotel voucher so he should not go to a shelter.

"I just want a new life and relocation," Blue said. "I would like the elected officials to come here to see it with my own eyes and see that we are now experiencing."

Flood waters about half a mile (800 meters) from the world famous night Beale Street, located on higher ground.

The river has reached record levels in some areas up, thanks to heavy rains and melting snow. He spared the Kentucky and Tennessee, north-west of any catastrophic flooding, and no deaths were reported there, but some low-lying towns and farmland along the river were flooded.

And there is tension further south in the Mississippi Delta and Louisiana, where the river can create a slow-growing disaster.

There's so much water in the Mississippi that tributaries that feed into it as backup, creating some of the most acute problems of flooding so far.

Downriver in Louisiana, officials warned residents that even if the key spillway northwest of Baton Rouge should have been open, residents can expect water from 5 to 25 feet (1,5 to 7,5 meters) deep over parts of seven parishes. Some of the most valuable agricultural lands of Louisiana is expected to be flooded.

Morganza spillway, northwest of Baton Rouge can be opened as early as Thursday, but the decision has not yet been done.

Separate spillway northwest of New Orleans was to be opened on Monday, helping to relieve pressure on the dam there, and the prisoners were to be evacuated from low-lying state prison in Angola.

Engineers say it is unlikely any major metropolitan areas will be flooded as the water pushes downstream within the next week or two. Nevertheless, officials are cautious.

Since the flood of 1927, catastrophe, killing hundreds, Congress has made to protect the city on the lower Mississippi priority, spending billions to shore up cities with floodwalls and cut the overflow of rivers and ponds - a departure from the "levees only" strategy, which led to the 1927 disaster.