Iowa town still dry after flood fears cause evacuations

Told their western Iowa town could be swamped by up to four feet of water, residents of tiny Modale pulled out their air conditioners, hauled off refrigerators and made plans to live elsewhere for weeks or even months. Now, with the Missouri River at its height and the levees holding, many of the 300 residents are asking: Where's the water? "It's almost like they put everyone in a panic, and they didn't have to," said Debbie Horan, manager of a store that stocks grain grown by area farmers. "Sitting and waiting. It's worse than anything else." Horan said she and others are glad their community, about 45km northeast of Omaha in Nebraska, hasn't been flooded by the surging Missouri River, but she wonders whether county officials overstated the danger when they explained the situation at a town meeting earlier in the month. After being told that the Missouri would be at its highest level in nearly 60 years because of rain upriver and a massive Rocky Mountain snowpack, more than half the town left. Some taped notes printed with mobile phone numbers to their buildings, then packed their belongings into trucks and drove off. They can't help but wonder, was it worth it? "It's all a big ‘if'," said Clyde Robbins, a retired mechanic who hauled four semi-trailers full of engines and tractor parts to higher ground last week. "If the levees break. If the water comes. If it reaches Modale." Harrison County Emergency Management Director Larry Oliver acknowledged frustration by residents, but he said it was their choice to leave. County officials simply informed them of inundation maps provided by the US Army Corps of Engineers that made clear parts of Modale would be under up to four feet of water if levees broke, and that even more water was possible if heavy rain swept through the area. The last time the Missouri River was so high in 1952 flood waters swamped the town. From / Gulf News