Good News Along the River

Dozens of parishioners filled the dry Centenary United Methodist Church in Louisiana, a few blocks from floodwaters that still cover about 15 percent of the town's neighborhoods.

They prayed for aid and gave thanks for the volunteers, National Guard soldiers and prison inmates who helped the community of nearly 4,000 in recent days.

"And they all worked," the Rev. Jeanne Webdell said of the volunteers. "They worked for a cause bigger than themselves, worked to help people that most didn't even know."

It appeared Sunday that the flooding could soon give way to recovery. The National Weather Service said the Mississippi was cresting Sunday at Canton, Mo., not far from the Iowa state line, through the lock and dam near Saverton, about 100 miles north of St. Louis. Crests were forecast for Monday in Louisiana and Clarksville.

"It's quieter, compared to earlier this week," said the town of Louisiana's emergency management director, Mike Lesley, adding that sandbagging in the town had largely ceased. "Last night, I actually got some sleep."

Elsewhere, the river was still rising. The latest forecasts for hard-hit Winfield and Grafton, Ill., pushed the crest back to Wednesday.

"We're just trying to deal with it as it comes to us," said Jamie Scott, a sheriff's dispatcher in Jersey County, Ill. "The crest [forecast] has dropped almost a foot, so that's a good thing. . . . All of our levees are holding."

Officials in Lincoln County, Mo., inspected levees near Winfield by air Sunday after one was overtopped earlier in the day, flooding about 1,000 acres and fewer than half a dozen homes, said Lincoln County emergency management spokesman Andy Binder.

"It just blew through our sandbags," Binder said, adding that authorities are confident the secondary levees protecting the town and nearby Elsberry will hold.

The storms and flooding that started in early June have forced thousands from their homes in six states, killing 24 and injuring roughly 150. Rural areas such as Lincoln County suffered the worst. There, more than 300 homes were flooded after more than 90 percent of the county's levees were overtopped.

Light rains forecast for eastern Missouri and southern Illinois were not expected to worsen the flooding, said National Weather Service meteorologist Ben Miller. Sporadic rains are expected throughout the week, he said, but will be scattered and light and shouldn't increase the flooding hazard.