RIVER AT RECORD STAGE
It was predicted that the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, Mississippi, to the Gulf would go two feet higher than the highest stage reported in 1912, according to a flood warning issued by Captain C. O. Sherrill, United States Army Engineer, on April 2d.
In 1912 the maximum of the river gauge at New Orleans showed nearly twenty-two feet. At that height, and even with the tide reduced by several immense crevasses, waters came over the New Orleans levees at a number of places, despite the fact that they were topped with several rows of sandbags.
Captain Sherrill ascribed the unprecedented flood entirely to the rains in the river bed caused by last year's crevasses. He issued orders to have the levees from Vicksburg to Fort Jackson on both sides raised above the flood stage of 1912, and men and material were sent to all points along the river to combat the expected high water in the lower Mississippi.
Colonel Townsend, head of the Mississippi River Commission, ten days previously predicted a stage as high as that of 1912, and sent out warnings to all engineers in the valley. It was acting upon his advice that Captain Sherrill began to assemble barges, quarter boats, bags, material and tools to be sent to points between Vicksburg and New Orleans for possible emergencies.
In explaining why the river from Vicksburg to the mouth of the river would be higher than last year, Captain Sherrill pointed to the fact that crevasses both below and above the stretch in 1912 lowered the river there, whereas upon the present rise, with levees expected to confine the water, the crest naturally would be higher. Because of this fact the brunt of the high water was expected to strike that stretch, and any possible trouble to be looked for could be expected there, although the levees between Old River and Baton Rouge might also be in danger.
RISING HOPE
The hopes of the people began to rise as they learned that the entire Mississippi levee system was to be made two feet higher than the record of the flood last year. It was expected the work would be completed before the crest of the Ohio River flood reached the lower Mississippi Valley.
On receipt of reports that two hundred families had been driven from their homes in the lowlands of the Atchafalaya River, near Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, owing to high water, and were in a destitute condition, local relief committees from New Orleans rushed a large quantity of supplies to that section.
The appeal said if immediate aid was not received it was feared many would die of starvation. Inhabitants of the district were principally foreigners, who had reclaimed a part of their truck farms, which were destroyed by last year's flood. Their newly planted crops were abandoned.