Evening Star Newspaper, December 6, 1927, Page 11

THE EVENING STAR. WASHINGTON! D! (. TUESDAY. DECEMBER 6. 1927 Whence come the floods. The Mississippi River receives the drain- age from 31, stales, or 41 per cent of the arca of the United States All or part of 31 states extending from Western New York to Montana, and from Canada to the Gulf, are drained by the Mississippi river system. The 1927 flood came from 29 of these states. Every larpe tributary of the Mississippi with- out exception poured a flood of Breater or lesser degree into the main stream during the spring of the year. The Ohio was in flood as far from its mouth * as Pittsburgh, where the river rose 1.6 feet above the 1912 record. The Illinois was in flood at Beardstown frpm February 4 to May 11, an unprecedented period of 97 consecutive days. The Missouri passed flood stage at Kansas City, April 19, and was 1.6 feet higher than the great floods of 1912 and 1922. The Arkansas reached the flood stage at Fort Smith, on the extreme western edge of the state, on April 12, and thereafter rose 14.7 feet within four days. ' The Red river passed flood stape at Fulton, Arkansas, April 10. The Tennessee at Chattanooga broke all previous records late in December. 1926, and the Cumberland at Nashville was almost 10 feet higher in January than the record of the 1912 flood. At Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio was pouring in its flood to join that from the Upper Mississippi and the Missouri, there were four successive crests, the last one attaining the un- precedented height of 56.4 feet, at which time the river remained above flood stage 49 days. It is no wonder then that record- breaking rains in the state of Arkan- sas during the month of April caused the over-burdened rivers to smash the levee lines to pieces, and over- whelm the surrounding countryside. o The Mississippi river, the state's only drainage channel to the Gulf, was already choked with the flood waters of far distant states, and the river at Vicksburg, Mississippi, had been at flood ‘stage two months before the Arkansas catastrophe occurred. It is not fair, it is not humanly pos: sible, to expect the states of the lower valley to take care not only of their own floods, but of the floods of West- ern Pennsylvania, of Nebraska, of Illinois, of New Mexico, of all the other 28 states of the valley as well. This Is the Second of a Series of Adver- tisements Published in the Interest of the People of the Mississippi Valley by The @imeg-ifii@ wne \{Un New Orleans [/