The Paddock

I'm not sure exactly where. Up in Missouri obviously. Far enough away that I was surprised I felt it. It must have been some serious demolition. I know I used to live 40 minutes away from Fort Knox and you'd hear the explosions from exercises from time to time. It was nothing like what I felt last night.

I think the Ohio River ends in Cairo, Illinois but I could be wrong.

It's on the Missouri side of the Mississippi river. It's across the river from Wickliffe, KY. They blew it to take pressure off the Cairo floodwall that was not going to last much longer. It is supposed to take some pressure off the Ohio river and Paducah also.

I'm not sure how many homes were saved by this but it's going to flood 130000 acres of pretty good farm land right at planting time. That's several hundred million dollars of crops. Surly it's for more than just Cairo, that place is a ghost town and most of it needs to be demolished. I watched the blast live via a news channels link around 11pm last night. Check youtube out for videos of before and after. Pretty awesome event but then it's easy to say that since it doesn't directly effect me. I can't imagine the mess that going to be left behind for those farmers to clean up. It will take years and years for that ground to recover.

No there isn't insurance against loss of farm ground. They most likely will get crop insurance benefits for this season only though. Still that will be at a reduced rate if they don't get it in the ground. You can say the same about the people of Cairo too, they know this can happen just the same. The difference is they can have insurance that will replace their belongings in full. They don't make dirt anymore. Cleaning up all the sand and getting the ground back to what it was could take up to 20 years. Not all the ground will be destroyed, water floods fields all the time and usually all you have are debris to clean up. I'd guess 10% of that ground is going to be a huge mess with the terrain nothing like it was.There are also homes and many building in the flood zone that are being destroyed.

I'm not trying to say one should suffer over the other but I'm not sure right now which mess would be cheaper/easier to recover from.

A few people live in that area. A very few. I'll pick human beings over land any time. Those fields will be fine and be ready to farm next year. That land was set aside for this very purpose. I'd consider that a buyer beware situation. Sure I feel for them but I'm sure there is something monetarily already in place to deal with this if it had to happen. People that know a LOT more about the entire scope of this thing looked over it and debated it endlessly I'm sure and decided this was the best course of action. Could be the levee was going to be breeched and flood this land anyway. Just a thought.

easy decision...no decision. If they didn't blow the levee, then Hickman floods and it goes all the way down to Union City and Dyersburg. Not to mention parts of Paducah.

+1 BB4L. Bad situation kept from being worse.