Pressure Pushes Water Flow Backwards in Tennessee; Impact on Farmers on Broken Levee; Syria Claims Military Leaving Daraa
ROMANS: All right. Happening now, some 23 miles of an interstate shut down because of flooding. Police say I-40 in eastern Arkansas closed at the White River. Water backed up pooling over the roadway. Drivers forced to take detours. More than 30,000 drivers pass this area every day. It will be a tough commute this morning.</s>VELSHI: Yes.</s>ROMANS: And boy, the situation just doesn't get any better down there.</s>VELSHI: A tough, tough morning in general for people along rivers in the Midwest.</s>CHETRY: Worried they're going to have to close the other side of the interstate as well. The Mississippi River so swollen with pressure. In Tennessee, they say the water is actually flowing backwards in some of those tributaries to the Mississippi River. The backup could be a huge problem for nearby neighborhoods. Homes, businesses and factories all in danger.</s>VELSHI: Joining us now to talk more about what's happening on the ground is Melissa Moon, CNN affiliate WREG. She is live in Memphis. What's the situation over there, Melissa?</s>MELISSA MOON, CNN AFFILIATE, WREG: Well, we are in Harbor Town on Mud Island in downtown Memphis. We're actually on the Wolf River, which is a tributary of the Mississippi and it is rising daily. You can see here what used to be much of the bank is now part of the river and people living along here are told to be ready to evacuate. You see the homes behind us, the water creeping closer and closer, especially the homes on the far end are now the ones that are danger. Right now, the Mississippi is at 45.1 feet. County emergency officials predict that it will meet the level of the 1937 flood by next Wednesday at 48 feet and they say that those floodwaters will remain four to seven days after that. Of course, they'll be dealing with a sludge mess. Now, we're told right now about 2,800 properties will be affected. That's down from an earlier prediction of 5,300. So that's some good news here. And people living in about 19 homes have been told to be ready, that they will be affected in some way. Now that could mean just water in the streets. Streets that will be closed. But some of those homes already have water in them right now. And all week long they've been putting up those floodgates along in Mississippi downtown and sandbagging just as a precautionary measure. Back to you.</s>VELSHI: Sorry.</s>CHETRY: No, I was just going to say the fact that this is a slow catastrophe, sort of unfolding in slow motion that they know it's actually going to get worse before it gets better. In the meantime, besides the sandbagging and besides telling people to take precautions, is there anything else that can be done?</s>MOON: Right now that's about all they can do except to warn people to get out of their neighborhoods. Some, of those, like I said, there were 19 zip codes that are affected yesterday. Even though the weather had gotten nice, we've had some stormy weather over the last couple of days. The sun is out for the last couple of days. They don't want people to not take this seriously. They're telling them to be vigilant if they live in those 19 zip codes to watch the water and be ready to evacuate if necessary.</s>VELSHI: All right. Melissa -- sorry, did you?</s>ROMANS: No, No. Melissa, thanks, from WREG. I'm looking at rivergages.com. I'm looking at all -- it's amazing how you can look and see how historical river stages are, where they should be. You know, it's just a remarkable up and down the Mississippi River, the Ohio River Valley. All of these places are just bumping up against a record river level. It's just a real challenge.</s>VELSHI: Yes. And it's remarkable what she said. It's going to be next week is when it's going to crest. And then they're looking at that water four to seven days after that.</s>CHETRY: Four to seven days after that.</s>VELSHI: So this is -- this is the problem. It's not something that's just happening. It really is a slow disaster.</s>CHETRY: Well, meteorologists are predicting that, again, it could be another month in some of these places before they start to see the water levels come down. Later today, government engineers are expected to blow up a levee on the Mississippi River again -- again in an effort to try to ease some of that pressure.</s>ROMANS: Earlier breaches sent water gushing over huge swaths of farmland. One of the big questions now, you know, what about the farmers? It's planting season. Or if you're doing winter wheat, you may have already crops in the ground --</s>VELSHI: Right.</s>ROMANS: -- depending on where you are in the country.</s>VELSHI: Rob is -- Rob Marciano is in Mississippi County, Missouri, where a lot of farmers are shaking their heads contemplating their next move and wondering, Rob, as Christine did about the wisdom of flooding the farmland to save towns. I mean, it's a trade-off, but that's where we get a lot of our food.</s>ROB MARCIANO, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Tough choices, guys. And it had to be made. You know, this is the third largest watershed in the world. These rivers drain water from New York to North Dakota up into Canada. Remarkable stuff really. And the remarkable amount of rainfall that we've seen has, well, prompted some extraordinary measures. You know, do we blow up levees? Do we flood towns or do we flood with thousands of people or do we flood farms with hundreds of people? Those types of tough decisions require precise measurements.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Head for that white -- for the levee break over there.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right. Coming up.</s>MARCIANO (voice-over): Bob Holmes and his team of USGS scientists have a critical job in the fight against the flood. Using sensitive GPS-sync (ph) Doppler instruments, they can precisely measure the river's flow through the demolished levee. It's been averaging three million gallons per second. (on camera): Now why is that important to find out the flow rate?</s>BOB HOLMES, USGS NATIONAL FLOOD COORDINATOR: Well, basically the corps is very interested. They're diverting water through the floodway now, so they need to know how much is coming in and they'll know how much is going out. So that's how they make their management decisions.</s>MARCIANO (voice-over): Like whether to blow another hole in the levee. (on camera): There it is. Up-close look at the levee they blew up two nights ago. All that river is now flown into, well, what was dry farmland. Incredible. (voice-over): Incredibly sad for farmers like Bob Byrne.</s>BOB BYRNE, MISSISSIPPI COUNTY FARM LAND OWNER: So far we probably lost 40,000 of our wheat crop.</s>MARCIANO: Like many here, the Byrnes have worked this land for generations. But they have known it's in a floodway and the risk that come with it. (on camera): Your entire family has been in this business now for over 100 years. Did you ever think in the back of your head, this could happen?</s>BYRNE: No. We've seen the Ohio River on a rampage, water run up to the top of the levee. We've seen this one on the rampage, but never the two together. But we just have to take it as it comes. You know? We've got it and we got to go on.</s>MARCIANO: Heartbreaking to see the pain in that farmer's eyes. He's certainly not alone. This is the farm field or the northern part of the floodway that's designed back in 1937 to open up for cases like this. And you know, the farmers they kind of know that's part of the deal, but they never really want to see this happen. It looks like a great lake. I mean, this thing stretches 38 miles from north to south. And the water really hasn't gone down much since they've opened both of these levies now because they've released more water now that's been held upstream because of all the rainfall we've had in the past couple of weeks. So it is going to take weeks for this water to get out of here, then get down the Mississippi, past Vicksburg, past Baton Rouge and eventually out into the Gulf of Mexico. It hasn't been this high, guys, since 1937 and we're seeing the effects of that right now.</s>VELSHI: Yes, Rob, I'm glad you said it because looking at that picture of you there does not look like a river behind you. It really does look like you're on the banks of a lake.</s>MARCIANO: And we were driving or on the boat yesterday and directing -- the scientists we were with were saying, go up this road, then make a bank around this telephone pole. And it was just surreal to know that you were over farmland and roadway in about six to at times 20 feet of water. This area being intentionally flooded, remarkable stuff.</s>VELSHI: All right, Rob. Thanks, Rob.</s>CHETRY: We want to take a look at our top stories now, half past the hour.</s>CHETRY (voice-over): French police reportedly retrieving the first body from the wreckage of an Air France flight that crashed into the Atlantic nearly two years ago. It was an Airbus 8330 traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Paris with 228 people on board when it went down. The wreckage was found last month 13,000 feet down. And the sounds of battle in Syria. Syria security forces who have been battling protesters for the last month and a half have according to state TV began pulling out of Daraa, it's a rebel stronghold. The government claims it has restored security and calm after confiscating weapons and arresting scores of people. One human rights group is saying that more than 500 people have been killed in the fighting in Syria. Well, the men who got Bin Laden back on U.S. soil now. The elite U.S. Navy SEAL team that stormed his compound in Pakistan is back home now. You're looking at exclusive pictures right now of the compound. U.S. officials now say that Bin Laden was unarmed, but they believed he was actually reaching for a gun when he was shot dead.</s>CHETRY: And a live picture now of the White House where in just two hours, President Obama will be leaving for the World Trade Center site. The president is expected to lay a wreath, meet with 9/11 families and then visit a firehouse that lost 15 men in the September 11th attacks.</s>ROMANS: He was next to President Bush in the days after 9/11. He will be with President Obama today days after the U.S. killed Bin Laden. Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York, joins us this morning. Senator, welcome to the program. It's been -- I mean, you knew people, your constituents, supporters for you, we all knew people who died on September 11th. To stand there next to the president today after standing with George Bush at the beginning of this whole odyssey, what does this mean to you?</s>SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Well, it's amazing. We, you know - when you come to this site I still remember the day after, the smell of death in the air.</s>SCHUMER (voice-over): The people holding pictures. "Have you seen my mother?" "Have you seen my son?" You don't forget that. But I think the shoulders of New Yorkers, Americans and people throughout the world, stand a little taller because we know now. This is sort of a turning point in the war on terror. When Bin Laden did his evil deeds and the towers went down, we said can we win this war?</s>SCHUMER: It's so different than the previous wars we fought with suicide bombers and no fields of battle. I now feel most people feel we're going to win this war. We haven't won it yet, but we are in forces of freedom win.</s>ROMANS: You know, there's been a lot of patriotism around the country from Republicans and Democrats, people of all walks of life who have celebrated the death of Bin Laden. Now some conservatives are saying that maybe this visit is more of a victory lap from the president and unnecessary. What do you say to that?</s>SCHUMER: The president deserves such credit for what he has done. You know, we saw his style. He's not a chest thumper. He's not going out with the rhetoric. He's thoughtful, but he's stuff and steely, and we saw that in that room. So he deserves huge credit and should be here, but that doesn't take away from what George Bush did to lay the groundwork as well. I think most Americans today feel that this is not any kind of political issue. This is an issue to feel good about America. Our previous president and this president.</s>ROMANS: You know, you live -- something I did not know about you, Senator, is that was you lived with Leon Panetta for 11 years. Leon Panetta is someone who's been instrumental in all this, of course, as the director of the CIA. He told lawmakers that Pakistan was either involved or incompetent and neither is a good place to be. Senator, Congress has to approve money for Pakistan, are you going to be -- what do you think first about the questions we should be asking about Pakistan and its role here?</s>SCHUMER: I think there are a lot of questions we should ask about Pakistan. I've been asking them for a while. Any country that makes Dr. A.Q. Kan, its hero, the man who sold weapons to North Korea, something's the matter. Now there are people in Pakistan allied with us. There are people in Pakistan allied with the terrorists. Our job is to strengthen the hand of those allied with us, but there are fundamental problems with Pakistan. They have to straighten those out. Pakistan will probably be the most difficult foreign policy issue not only for the United States, but for the world in the next 10 years. It's nuclear. It's poor, militancy is growing and they have never had good leadership.</s>ROMANS: Well, Senator, just a few weeks ago, I mean, Congress approved more money for Pakistan. Are you going to seriously question a vote to give more money to Pakistan?</s>SCHUMER: Well, look, I'm not calling for cutting it off that some have done because maybe that aid can strengthen the hand of those of us who are allied with us. So the question is how do you strengthen the hand of the good site in Pakistan, which too often defers to the other? I mean, Pakistan needs to straighten itself out. I think there's going to be a lot of introspection in Pakistan as well. Because what Leon Panetta said is exactly right. They're either extremely incompetent or supremely duplicitous neither one is a good place to be. And any country that has a future looks inside itself and says what are we doing wrong? Pakistan is doing a lot wrong.</s>ROMANS: All right, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat from New York, thank you so much for joining us on this important morning.</s>SCHUMER: Thank you. Good to be with you.</s>CHETRY: Take from the senator this morning. When we come back, we're going to be joined by the managing editor of "Fortune" magazine, the top Fortune 500 companies for 2011. What company is number one and what are some that dropped off the list?</s>ROMANS: Big enough to be -</s>VELSHI: It's 38 minutes after the hour. We'll be right back.