Guard warns citizens that flood could last for months

State emergency officials are expecting Missouri River flooding to move across the state in the coming months.

The Missouri National Guard is warning residents along the swollen river if flooding starts to go down, it’s no sign the flood fight is letting up.

The Guard has more than 200 citizen soldiers working with local agencies in flooded areas, protecting abandoned property and even flying Blackhawk mission to drop sandbags.

The Missouri National Guard’s director of plans and operations, Colonel David Boyle, says river stage forecasts can be deceiving.

“This fight will expand as it expands from northwest Missouri across to the lower Missouri all the way over to Saint Charles,” Boyle said. “ It also will ebb and flow, so whatever fights we’re in today- say it’s overtopping today, sometime in the future we’ll probably be revisiting that same fight with a breech or some kind of a failure or some kind of other problem. Or if it goes down we’ll revisit with overtopping again.”

The Guard is also using more than 30 Hum-V’s in northwest Missouri’s flood areas and 11,000 Guard soldiers are available to state officials to help during the next two months.

Flood waters from the Missouri River are not expected to cause additional flooding on the Mississippi in Southeast Missouri. However, the Army Corps of Engineers cautions that a rising Ohio River may cause a bump in river levels south of Cairo.

Kirk Wayman, KXCV with Jacob McCleland, KRCU

Posted in: Kirk Wayman,KXCV,Missouri National Guard,Missouri River flooding