Wildfires Scorch Both Coasts, River Floods Drown Heartland
By ROGER PETTERSON
By ROGER PETTERSON
The Associated Press
NEW YORK – Nature’s fury made life miserable Wednesday from one end of the nation to the other, with people forced out of their homes by wildfires near both coasts and the Canadian border and by major flooding in the Midwest.
“It’s a major flood,” National Weather Service meteorologist Suzanne Fortin said Wednesday of the flooding in Missouri. “It won’t be a record breaker, but it will be in the top three.”
However, a three-week-old fire in southern Georgia had become that state’s biggest on record after charring 167 square miles of forest and swamp.
Smoke and a dusting of ashes filled the air through much of Florida and southeastern Georgia. The haze over most of Florida closed several highways and sent people with breathing problems indoors.
The flooding was produced by the drenching weekend thunderstorms across the Plains states that also devastated Greensburg, Kan. In addition to 11 tornado deaths, two drowning deaths were blamed on the storms, one each in Oklahoma and Kansas.
High water had poured over the tops of at least 20 levees along the Missouri River and other streams in the state, authorities said Wednesday.
Missouri National Guard troops were helping. Highway Patrol troopers were working 24-hour shifts near Big Lake, a town of about 150 permanent residents in the state’s northwest corner, which was inundated by five levee breaks along the Missouri River and four smaller ones on other streams, said patrol Lt. John Hotz.
No injuries were reported. Big Lake, some two miles from the Missouri River, is about 35 miles northwest of St. Joseph.
In Missouri’s Jackson County, authorities evacuated 300 to 400 residents of Levasy on Wednesday. At least a dozen homes were partially under water from the Missouri River, a dispatcher said.
In central Missouri, the state capital, Jefferson City, was preparing for flooding. After floods in 1993 and 1995, the city raised the elevation of its riverside sewage treatment plant, and the federal government bought out scores of homes on the north shore of the river, but the airport and businesses are still vulnerable.
On the West Coast, in view of many Los Angeles residents, a blaze had covered more than 800 acres in the city’s sprawling Griffith Park behind the iconic Griffith Observatory.
The danger to homes south of the park had eased Wednesday and many of the hundreds of residents evacuated overnight were allowed to return. However, fire officials warned that conditions could change.
“The canyons and those erratic winds are dangerous,” fire Capt. Carlos Calvillo said.
The fire appeared to have been accidental, said b attalion C hief John Miller, who oversees arson investigations.
In the Southeast, a wildfire in northern Florida’s Bradford County forced the evacuation of about 250 homes, said Annaleasa Winter, a state forestry spokeswoman. The fire blackened 16,000 to 18,000 acres and was 20 percent contained.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said the state had more than 200 active fires Wednesday that had charred a total of 78 square miles.
Officials in southeastern Georgia issued a mandatory evacuation Wednesday for an area including the town of Moniac, saying that by early to day it may be in the path of a 107,000-acre blaze in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, the largest recorded blaze in Georgia history.
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