A year ago, an unusually rainy spring caused the Mississippi River’s most serious flooding since 1927. Record-setting water levels threatened Memphis, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. It was up to Major General Michael Walsh, then commander of the Mississippi Valley division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, to open floodgates and blow up levees, flooding some areas but averting catastrophe in major cities downstream. In his own words, here’s how he decided where to send the swelling waters.
We knew it was going to be a challenging flood year. I was working in an operations center aboard the Mississippi, the largest motor vessel on the river: 241 feet long, with five decks.
We have a comprehensive flood plan that dictates what to do when water reaches certain levels—where we need to allow controlled flooding to save cities downstream. By April 9 the flood gauges at Cairo, Illinois, which straddles ...
