Filed under: Around the Web
The bulging Mississippi River rolled into the fertile Mississippi Delta on Tuesday, threatening to wash away stately homes and shotgun shacks, and destroy fields of cotton, rice and corn in a flood of historic proportions.
The river took aim at one of the most poverty-stricken parts of the country after cresting before daybreak at Memphis, Tenn., just inches short of the record set in 1937. Some low-lying neighborhoods were inundated, but the city's high levees protected much of the rest of Memphis.
Over the past week or so in the Delta, floodwaters along the rain-swollen river and its backed-up tributaries have already washed away crops, forced many people to flee to higher ground and closed some of the dockside casinos that are vital to the state's economy.
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