Mayor Jo Anne Smiley surveyed the bustling effort to save her tiny historic town from the rapidly rising Mississippi River, took a deep breath and ran down her mental checklist.“Foodwise, I think we’re OK for today,” she said. “My husband is getting fried chicken, service for a hundred. The ice situation was kind of desperate for a while, better now. I think we have enough water.”
And then there were the sand bags. In the past few days, nearly 300,000 had been filled and placed to protect the town’s riverfront homes and businesses, she said Sunday. Another 70,000 were on the way and Smiley had ordered 100,000 more. The trouble was getting them filled.
“If we just get more bodies, we’ll be OK,” she said. “We may just pull this off.”
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