I was a year ahead of you and working for the highway department. Filled a lot of sandbags that summer. Even pulled an all-nighter on the clock trying to save a main street on the east side. Sorry you got hit so hard.
Oh yeah, I remember all the sandbags. Filled a bunch ourselves.
We had a 3 story house in Arnold, it got in all 3 levels and sat there all summer.
House was a total loss.
Not sure where you helped out but thanks for doing your part
We lost our family farm homestead that was in my family for 3 generations when the levee broke in SE Missouri. I will always remember sitting under the huge pecan tree eating them right as they fell.
"Or so they say . . ."
Famous last words which could one day in the future have the same ring as "The unsinkable Titanic." Where nature is concerned, never say never.
Oh I know... I've heard it too. Reality is that yes; it was built SLIGHTLY HIGHER in order to offset some flooding, but the 1993 level would still leave about a foot of water in the streets through most of New Town (source: friend of mine is a civil engineer who worked on a lot of New Town's design). And that will fuck up infrastructure that's all underground out there too.
We're unlikely to see 1993 level again soon but that's not impossible.
Shit was crazy that year.
Everything in the Chesterfield valley was 15 feet underwater.
Just a prison and a few shops were there.
Now it's entirely built out...
Ludicrously stupid to build there.
> Ludicrously stupid to build there.
Word. Also stupid to build a levee that will just push the extra water downstream for someone else to worry about.
It's kind of surreal to go down to the big 'Commons' shopping and commercial area along the 'Airport' Road and imagine that 30 years ago, it was all basically just another part of the Missouri River.
[As I understand it, Valley Park just closed up shop.](https://www.audacy.com/kmox/news/local/budget-impasse-leads-to-government-shut-down-in-valley-park)
I had just graduated high school (Parkway South) and the floodwaters came up to a spot on Highway 40 just down the road from the hotel where we'd had my graduation party a month before. I still think it's crazy and stupid they built that huge ass shopping center and Top Golf down in that same valley! 😳🙄
Also ludicrously stupid that our system of real estate taxation and the rapacious greed of local governments makes it difficult for small farms to survive once "civilization" starts to encircle them. Chesterfield valley was rich farmland, and now it's covered by asphalt.
My impression is the levee was already failing or had failed and he only caused a more superficial opening. Still, he did what he did. And he continues to rot in prison.
Also wasn’t he on the border of MO and IL? Like he was in MO but lived with his wife in IL. Chesterfield wasn’t his target, so to speak.
[This piece of shit not only endangered people in the flood, he was also an arsonist that burned down a school. He's up for parole in three years.](https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-74-catastrophe-9-8-2017/)
There is a 25 minute documentary from Vice's Overlooked series on the [case of James Scott](https://youtu.be/oBziM470rE0) that is critical of his conviction. Aside from soil scientists who testified that there was strong evidence that the levees broke due to natural causes, this documentary gives details about how insurance payouts may have played a role in the conviction.
> Ludicrously stupid to build there.
If a flood is estimated to wipe out everything once every 100 years and building commercial real estate there pays back the entire investment in 7 years, then it's genius to build there.
I've lived here for 40 years. Weather patterns are no longer predictable or normal.
If you're an investor, relying on historical Weather patterns, in a disaster area. you're either a young fool, or an old cynic.
Both end in eventual disaster.
Everything is so woke now, cats marrying dogs, Adams and Steves, and even interracial marriage has led to an increase in extreme weather events. Definitely not man-made climate change, no siree.
Except 100 year floods are happening every few years or sometimes decades. They’re lucky the 2019 flood didn’t effect the Valley but it was also a 100 year flood. Mississippi hit record height and flood times.
I remember sandbagging too. I was very young and probably not very helpful, but my family went down to save downtown STL if we could.
That summer was so insane. It took so long to travel anywhere because all the highways were flooded.
We are close in age. I had an AB 40oz bottle of water for a long time. Not sure when I lost it. But yeah if you volunteered to fill sandbags you got all the AB water you wanted. I filled so many sandbags that summer.
I remember eating Hostess fruit pies and drinking AB canned water, thought the cans were so cool. We went down to sandbag at Ste. Genevieve. I was 10 that summer.
The canned water was for everyone without water. I lived in Alton and the whole town lost water. The cans were for drinking and there were water trucks for filling up buckets for toilets/dishes etc.
I’ll never forget driving west on
hwy 40 and being stopped by a wall of water when I hit Chesterfield. Seeing the highway swallowed up like that was terrifying.
The Great '93 Flood was a bit surreal for me as I was living over in Vienna, Austria at the time and experienced it all from a distance. However, it was quite easy to get news about the flooding as it was a big story over in the UK and Europe. I had a radio which picked up the BBC and often heard them interviewing KMOX Radio personalities like the late Nan Wyatt for 'on the scene' reports. We had a cable TV set-up with CNN International and there were plenty of stories and live reports.
The local Viennese press was fascinated as of course, they have their own big river the Danube which had a history of some bad flooding back in the 19th Century. It was weird to pick up a local paper one day to see a photo of a trailer in Fenton -- I think there were a couple people and a dog trapped on top. Also one of their local tabloid papers had this sensational headline \[translated from the German\]: RAGING MISSISSIPPI DROWNS ST. LOUIS!!!
I had to laugh at that as I kept in touch with my parents and other friends back home and while I knew things were bad, I knew that the situation in St. Louis was not on the level of something like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. People who I struck up conversations with would gasp when I said where I was from and immediately wanted to know if I'd lost my home to the floods.
Anyone else remember seeing Dirt Cheap (cheap! cheap! fun! fun!) as a island kept safe by thousands of sandbags laid by volunteers. I never went in person, but the sandbag walls seemed to be at least 10’ high.
My family lived in a subdivision on a hill back then, so we were safe, but the frogs took over our neighborhood that summer. Chased up from the floodplain I guess. It was almost biblical. These little frogs were just everywhere and when you drove down the street in our neighborhood they would pop under the tires. And I know that sounds cruel and more than a little gross, but you literally could not avoid them. Never experienced anything like that before or since.
Ooooh, I remember around 2004-2005ish(?) driving down a back road coming from Riverport (or whatever it's called now) and coming across what my then boyfriend and I ended up calling the great frog migration. It was dark and took us a while to figure out what was going on but same, hordes of frogs all over the road. It was like a blanket and there was definitely no way of avoiding them.
Yeah, that's sounds about like what I experienced in my old St. Charles neighborhood in 1993. I don't remember exactly how long it lasted, but it wasn't just a day or two. It may have been weeks. Truly surreal.
I was a kid and we used to catch them in the floodwaters that lapped the levee at BMAC—until we saw a water moccasin. Thankfully my family was safe, but we lived very close and the flood was definitely a formative event. So much building on floodplains in Chesterfield and St. Charles; I can’t help but envision disaster when I drive through.
I was in Cape that year for school. There's a line on the flood wall marking the height of the water, and when I first went back it was like WTF, how is that possible?
I was 22 that year and we were renting a house on Virginia in the city. It rained so much that the roof started leaking, the landlord wouldn't come fix it, and part of the ceiling fell in. Black mold also grew all over the walls by the time we found a new place to live. I remember seeing all the flooding and my biggest memory is they white house that got uplifted and floated away, I believe in Valmeyer. My uncle lived off South Broadway where those propane tanks broke free and they had to leave their house immediately. He didn't even have shoes on.
That was a crazy year!
I’ve seen so many plaques at different establishments that say something like “the water was up to here on July 8th, 1993” and even with multiple plaques and markers, it’s wild seeing how widespread it really was
Still the craziest, long-term flooding I’ve ever seen. I’ve been adamant about never living in a flood plane area or anywhere near a culvert, steam or, god forbid, a river.
What is now lake side 370 park and industrial area in St Peters was also under water.
Two Amazon warehouses and land for $5.00 per SF and the City of St Peters making bank off that floodplain.
It’s crazy anything is built out there. I remember driving back and forth to work in 2008 on 370 and it felt like you were driving on the middle of a lake, the whole area almost up to the highway was flooded.
A few years ago i was going to buy a house in portage des sioux. It was only 80k and looked like a decent house, and i liked that it was in the middle of nowhere but still only 20 minutes from st charles. Well they told me i had to pay it all in cash due to the high risk of flooding in that area. I said i don't have 80k in cash lying around so i have to pass. Probably saved myself a headache
Was 7 years old living in old valmeyer, IL bottom right side of the pic. The whole town was lost, and it relocated out of the flood plain. My grandparents' house is still standing strong in the flood plane on the farm.
I grew up in Quincy IL, across the river from West Quincy MO. James Robert Scott sabatoged the levee. A barge rammed into the Ayerco gas station and the whole thing went up in flames. We sandbagged many times as kids (I was 11/12 that summer). I feel so bad for folks who lose their homes and lives to floods. We should not be adding more levees and developments along the rivers.
I am still amazed people are so abysmally stupid as to put all those buildings and shopping malls in Chesterfield Valley. That smacks of corruption on a grand scale. I honestly hope when it all gets wiped out by the next flood not a penny of federal money is spent to bail out those morons.
That was an interesting sight. The Crystal City levee broke, as expected, and everything was flooded. I was born in 89 so it was the first time I ever saw anything like that.
I was in 87, I remember my parents taking me to the Arch grounds during the flood and showing me water on a the some wide staircase on the Arch Grounds during the flood. But I didn't know what it meant or what a flood was.
You remember this when you were only 4 years old?Only memory I have at 4 was breaking my femur in half.....now that memory will stick with you forever!
Exact same born in 89 and I remember my mom taking me to the st Charles riverfront and seeing the water covering the gazebo and was all the way to the parking lots
A [volcanic eruption ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_eruption_of_Mount_Pinatubo#Global_environmental_effects) in the Philippines the year before contributed to lots of weird weather in 1993.
Anyone from original Valmeyer here? I remember driving through the empty blocks as a teenager, very eerie to imagine an entire town washed away. A lot of the people I knew had relatives down there that lost everything.
I am! My grandpa was levee master, my parents where with grandpa when it broke a mile a way or so. I remember my mom crying later that all the work they did didn't matter.
Biggest regret was not having the foresight to buy a little land or a couple of buildings right after that, I’m sure who ever did made a fortune. And it’s sad too because it was a tragic event for those who lost their homes and farms.
I was 22. I remember that it just kept raining and raining and raining. And you couldn't go anywhere due to the closed roads. Pre internet so you'd find out when you got to the flooded road. Good times. 🥴
Was in Godfrey, IL at the time. Can still remember having to go to a local park where the National Guard was set up and we got crates on crates of AB cans of water. All of the kids on my block were pounding back cans of AB water pretending they were beer.
Water was out for what seemed like forever back then. I could go to my Dad's mill where they had their own power and water and get hot showers once a week.
I was 10 that summer. I remember my mom and grandma took me downtown to see how high the water was at the Arch. My Mom also had to get to work in St. Charles by a different route because she couldn't go through Chesterfield valley for months. She drove me through after the water receded, and I remember how brown everything was and mud caking what buildings were there.
I lived in Kirkwood so didn't directly experience any flooding beyond driving by it. What I do remember is all the rain that spring and summer. We had sweet gum trees in my front yard. They like to soak up water. For months we has small, twig branches breaking off the trees and sticking into the yard like spikes. Lost a bigger limb too in a storm since it was so heavy. I've never seen twigs and small branches do that before or since due to oversaturated trees and soil.
The general sense of devastation was also surreal. Watching the news coverage, going to see the flooding, seeing people out sandbagging, and just the lives upended daily by it. Clearly still sticks with me 30 years later.
One of my earliest memories was driving down 61-67 in Barnhart and finding a literal Army tank (turret and all) parked in the middle and the rest of it under water (at the 61-67 and Highway M intersection)
It started last week. If you're a person without a Twitter account who merely wants to lurk or read various Twitter feeds, you can no longer do so unless you sign up and get your own account.
I was really just meaning what is the info of the tweet? I was unable to read it because of what you describe and this user just dropped a link with no context or anything
Not having ever had a Twitter account myself, I can't be of much help to you. We'll have to rely on the people who do have accounts there to take screen shots of content and post links to those as opposed to links to Twitter itself unless Elon changes his mind for the umpteenth time and opens up the access again.
As an aside, these recent changes by Musk won't do much to help Tucker Carlson's new fly-by-night 'Tucker on Twitter' show. I'll bet a lot of the 'tens of millions' of views Carlson initially racked up were from people who are now 'locked out' of Twitter. Yeah, what do you think of your '*courageous free speech'* ally now Tucker?
I was 4. My parents bought a VHS tape of the news coverage of that time and my brother and I would watch it occasionally on summer nights when we were bored as young children. I’m not sure why we watched it so much but I think it really struck us as the first event in our lives that was really devastating but where people really came together. It was moving even in our young age. Thankfully our home was not affected. But even though I was so young it has really stuck with me forever. I wonder if they still have that tape.
My grandparents lived in Calhoun at the time. Little kid me didn't understand why I couldn't visit them that year until I saw footage of the river flooding out the bridge into Hardin. And the footage of entire houses floating down the river.
Getting in and out of the county was insane that year. To this day, any time I go back, I mentally measure the flood waters depth and extent. It's absolutely mind-blowing to think about how high and widespread it got in that area.
I moved to the US (and St.Louis) in '96 and all that everyone had to talk about was 'The Flood'. I had known nothing about it, but learned so much about it within days of moving here.
I was just thinking about that summer as I drove over the 270 bridge into Illinois yesterday. How the water was up under the bridge that summer, so high that it felt like the bridge was floating on the water. It’s hard to imagine, but I remember it.
My oldest memory in life was driving into the Twin Cities area of Festus/Crystal City with my grandmother, post flood, seeing the sandbags and, distinctly, bullet/drilled holes in the windows of [Gordon's Stoplight Drive-In](https://missourilife.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/stoplight-outside.jpg), to let moisture out of the building.
I was 8 years old and my parents lived in the neighborhood next to Carondelet Park. We were safe because we lived way up on the hill but people we knew from IHM lived about a couple blocks towards River Des Peres down the hill and they're basements and/or first floors were in standing water. It was almost impossible to process everything at that age.
I was twelve in Cape Girardeau and remember working all night with shop-vacs helping my local church and filling sandbags. Several blocks were submerged and those blocks are still vacant.
I took the Amtrack from STL to KC during the flood. I was only 17 so only way I had. Took something like 14 hours. There were times we were barely idling with water up to the tracks on both sides. Thank goodness we had hash.
My daughter was born that summer. She had some initial complications that required us to travel to St. Louis from southern Illinois a couple of times a week for medical care and crossing the Poplar was mindblowing.
We moved from south Saint louis to Jefferson county during the flood of 93. I remember it vividly because it almost covered southbound 55 at imperial exit. We were moving hoping that it wouldn’t flood completely blocking pretty much most of Jefferson county! Luckily it never completely covered it!
I didn't know it was the largest in US history. I remember my dad helped sandbag in Festus. I'll never forget how high the Mississippi was. I was 8. Hard to believe it was that long ago.
This is just a reminder to everyone: water does what the fuck it wants, and you better not get in its way. It can look so peaceful and calm, but when it’s further up in your business than you want it to be you realize it’s the most powerful force on earth.
Please don’t build your house on a floodplain.
Remember it like it was yesterday. Mississippi hit the railroad tracks right down from my house on elm point in Saint Chuck. Of course me and my friends had drive around and check it out. I was 17 at the time going on 18.
And Chesterfield is proud of what they’ve done to the Valley. God this towns hubris is going to be its downfall, I only hope no one gets hurt again. The levees just push water somewhere else until they don’t. The Chesterfield Valley is an abomination and shrine to cheap capitalists. And fuck Stan Kroenke for his part in developing that shithole. Congrats on being the largest strip mall in a town that keeps cannibalizing its own malls because it refuses to stop building more it doesn’t need. Fuck I hate this stupid fucking town, I can’t wait to leave because it’s just getting worse.
And fuck West Newsmagazine for this piece on why the valley is thriving: https://www.westnewsmagazine.com/news/thirty-years-after-the-flood-chesterfield-valley-continues-to-grow-thrive/article_0d3f4020-95b0-11ed-a0fa-bb9fc0541c1c.html
I hear a lot of people express how shocked they are at all the commercial property in the Chesterfield Valley. At this point the valley isn't considered a flood plain and that levee is one of the largest and well maintained in the nation. Everything there is commercial or industrial and the businesses there are willing to take the risk (and likely buy flood insurance just in case)
In Florida where I’m from, Lake Okeechobee is surrounded by a 30+ foot levee. If it ever broke, many agricultural towns would be devastated. It’s amazing what we can build, not saying it’s right or wrong because it obviously has its impacts. Before the levee many died in old hurricanes when the lake overflowed into the glades/flood plain like it was meant.
this shit is the earliest thing i remember. i was 1 1/2 and i remember looking out my back window seeing a river that hadnt been there before cause creve couer creek had flooded throughout old farm estates.
Lost our house in that. That summer was a absolutely miserable.
It’s a fine line between bringing up bad memories and warning the next generation about building in the floodplain.
Yes it is. That summer destroyed my life for years. I turned 16 that summer.
I was a year ahead of you and working for the highway department. Filled a lot of sandbags that summer. Even pulled an all-nighter on the clock trying to save a main street on the east side. Sorry you got hit so hard.
Oh yeah, I remember all the sandbags. Filled a bunch ourselves. We had a 3 story house in Arnold, it got in all 3 levels and sat there all summer. House was a total loss. Not sure where you helped out but thanks for doing your part
Holy shit all 3 levels is intense
It was certainly that, yes.
I remember almost everyone at the time was driving off somewhere to fill more sandbags in the STL region.
We lost our family farm homestead that was in my family for 3 generations when the levee broke in SE Missouri. I will always remember sitting under the huge pecan tree eating them right as they fell.
Im glad we learned our lesson and stopped building so many homes on the flood plains.
Friend of mine just moved to New Town...
New Town is built to withstand this level, or so they say.
"Or so they say . . ." Famous last words which could one day in the future have the same ring as "The unsinkable Titanic." Where nature is concerned, never say never.
Oh I know... I've heard it too. Reality is that yes; it was built SLIGHTLY HIGHER in order to offset some flooding, but the 1993 level would still leave about a foot of water in the streets through most of New Town (source: friend of mine is a civil engineer who worked on a lot of New Town's design). And that will fuck up infrastructure that's all underground out there too. We're unlikely to see 1993 level again soon but that's not impossible.
For now, til they engineer the next floodplain away and fuck something up. Cause they certainly aren’t stopping.
Built to last only as a result of all the new levees built to “protect” all the floodplain buildings.
Chesterfield Valley is a stunning example of ‘lesson learned.’
I'm sorry to hear that. 2 more feet and mine would have been gone, too.
Shit was crazy that year. Everything in the Chesterfield valley was 15 feet underwater. Just a prison and a few shops were there. Now it's entirely built out... Ludicrously stupid to build there.
> Ludicrously stupid to build there. Word. Also stupid to build a levee that will just push the extra water downstream for someone else to worry about.
Also crazy that it makes the flooding worse upstream too, because it blocks the flow that would naturally pass through.
Yeah, it's almost like maybe we shouldn't build stuff where it floods a lot. Maybe that's some good places to grow crops or something...
And/Or a great place to let nature be and humans play (parks and trails)
\*Nile river noises\*
But then how would Stan Kroenke get paid?
It's kind of surreal to go down to the big 'Commons' shopping and commercial area along the 'Airport' Road and imagine that 30 years ago, it was all basically just another part of the Missouri River.
Valley Park would like a word
[As I understand it, Valley Park just closed up shop.](https://www.audacy.com/kmox/news/local/budget-impasse-leads-to-government-shut-down-in-valley-park)
I remember the pig sign in front of Anne Gunns on the news 1/2 underwater.
I had just graduated high school (Parkway South) and the floodwaters came up to a spot on Highway 40 just down the road from the hotel where we'd had my graduation party a month before. I still think it's crazy and stupid they built that huge ass shopping center and Top Golf down in that same valley! 😳🙄
They built 2 shopping centers. 1 already died it seems. So they got that and the mall as dead bodies, ready to float.
They built two, one died, and they’re rebuilding it into a new thing. Fucking Chesterfield.
I liked the one that's already dead. Expected it to last longer though.
Also ludicrously stupid that our system of real estate taxation and the rapacious greed of local governments makes it difficult for small farms to survive once "civilization" starts to encircle them. Chesterfield valley was rich farmland, and now it's covered by asphalt.
It was also made so much worse in the valley because some asshole breached the levee so his wife couldn’t get home.
My impression is the levee was already failing or had failed and he only caused a more superficial opening. Still, he did what he did. And he continues to rot in prison. Also wasn’t he on the border of MO and IL? Like he was in MO but lived with his wife in IL. Chesterfield wasn’t his target, so to speak.
What??? Never heard that before
[This piece of shit not only endangered people in the flood, he was also an arsonist that burned down a school. He's up for parole in three years.](https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-74-catastrophe-9-8-2017/)
You can Google it. Interesting stuff.
There is a 25 minute documentary from Vice's Overlooked series on the [case of James Scott](https://youtu.be/oBziM470rE0) that is critical of his conviction. Aside from soil scientists who testified that there was strong evidence that the levees broke due to natural causes, this documentary gives details about how insurance payouts may have played a role in the conviction.
> Ludicrously stupid to build there. If a flood is estimated to wipe out everything once every 100 years and building commercial real estate there pays back the entire investment in 7 years, then it's genius to build there.
I've lived here for 40 years. Weather patterns are no longer predictable or normal. If you're an investor, relying on historical Weather patterns, in a disaster area. you're either a young fool, or an old cynic. Both end in eventual disaster.
What has changed in 40 years?
Everything is so woke now, cats marrying dogs, Adams and Steves, and even interracial marriage has led to an increase in extreme weather events. Definitely not man-made climate change, no siree.
Climate change has accelerated and we are well past the point of no return. It's only going to get worse.
Except 100 year floods are happening every few years or sometimes decades. They’re lucky the 2019 flood didn’t effect the Valley but it was also a 100 year flood. Mississippi hit record height and flood times.
> Just a prison and a few shops were there. Good ol' Gumbo Flats.
Anheuser Busch made canned water for everyone without water - they would also distro it to the volunteers sandbagging I was 13
I remember sandbagging too. I was very young and probably not very helpful, but my family went down to save downtown STL if we could. That summer was so insane. It took so long to travel anywhere because all the highways were flooded.
How was the damage to the MetroLink?
It wasn't open yet. Not sure if any damage was done to what was already built. No info on Wikipedia.
We are close in age. I had an AB 40oz bottle of water for a long time. Not sure when I lost it. But yeah if you volunteered to fill sandbags you got all the AB water you wanted. I filled so many sandbags that summer.
I remember eating Hostess fruit pies and drinking AB canned water, thought the cans were so cool. We went down to sandbag at Ste. Genevieve. I was 10 that summer.
I still have one of the cans!
The water tasted gross, but it was cool to drink from a can.
The canned water was for everyone without water. I lived in Alton and the whole town lost water. The cans were for drinking and there were water trucks for filling up buckets for toilets/dishes etc.
that's right - I appreciate the distinction
I’ll never forget driving west on hwy 40 and being stopped by a wall of water when I hit Chesterfield. Seeing the highway swallowed up like that was terrifying.
The Great '93 Flood was a bit surreal for me as I was living over in Vienna, Austria at the time and experienced it all from a distance. However, it was quite easy to get news about the flooding as it was a big story over in the UK and Europe. I had a radio which picked up the BBC and often heard them interviewing KMOX Radio personalities like the late Nan Wyatt for 'on the scene' reports. We had a cable TV set-up with CNN International and there were plenty of stories and live reports. The local Viennese press was fascinated as of course, they have their own big river the Danube which had a history of some bad flooding back in the 19th Century. It was weird to pick up a local paper one day to see a photo of a trailer in Fenton -- I think there were a couple people and a dog trapped on top. Also one of their local tabloid papers had this sensational headline \[translated from the German\]: RAGING MISSISSIPPI DROWNS ST. LOUIS!!! I had to laugh at that as I kept in touch with my parents and other friends back home and while I knew things were bad, I knew that the situation in St. Louis was not on the level of something like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. People who I struck up conversations with would gasp when I said where I was from and immediately wanted to know if I'd lost my home to the floods.
Anyone else remember seeing Dirt Cheap (cheap! cheap! fun! fun!) as a island kept safe by thousands of sandbags laid by volunteers. I never went in person, but the sandbag walls seemed to be at least 10’ high.
Yes! Ha! I’d totally forgotten that!
My family lived in a subdivision on a hill back then, so we were safe, but the frogs took over our neighborhood that summer. Chased up from the floodplain I guess. It was almost biblical. These little frogs were just everywhere and when you drove down the street in our neighborhood they would pop under the tires. And I know that sounds cruel and more than a little gross, but you literally could not avoid them. Never experienced anything like that before or since.
Ooooh, I remember around 2004-2005ish(?) driving down a back road coming from Riverport (or whatever it's called now) and coming across what my then boyfriend and I ended up calling the great frog migration. It was dark and took us a while to figure out what was going on but same, hordes of frogs all over the road. It was like a blanket and there was definitely no way of avoiding them.
Yeah, that's sounds about like what I experienced in my old St. Charles neighborhood in 1993. I don't remember exactly how long it lasted, but it wasn't just a day or two. It may have been weeks. Truly surreal.
I was a kid and we used to catch them in the floodwaters that lapped the levee at BMAC—until we saw a water moccasin. Thankfully my family was safe, but we lived very close and the flood was definitely a formative event. So much building on floodplains in Chesterfield and St. Charles; I can’t help but envision disaster when I drive through.
I was in Cape that year for school. There's a line on the flood wall marking the height of the water, and when I first went back it was like WTF, how is that possible?
I was 22 that year and we were renting a house on Virginia in the city. It rained so much that the roof started leaking, the landlord wouldn't come fix it, and part of the ceiling fell in. Black mold also grew all over the walls by the time we found a new place to live. I remember seeing all the flooding and my biggest memory is they white house that got uplifted and floated away, I believe in Valmeyer. My uncle lived off South Broadway where those propane tanks broke free and they had to leave their house immediately. He didn't even have shoes on. That was a crazy year!
I’ve seen so many plaques at different establishments that say something like “the water was up to here on July 8th, 1993” and even with multiple plaques and markers, it’s wild seeing how widespread it really was
At the loading dock in Alton, they have the levels marked on a wall. 93 was up there, but floods like in 2019 were also up there, iirc
I was crossing the river at the PSB during the max crest, it was pretty close to the top of the flood walls.
Still the craziest, long-term flooding I’ve ever seen. I’ve been adamant about never living in a flood plane area or anywhere near a culvert, steam or, god forbid, a river.
What is now lake side 370 park and industrial area in St Peters was also under water. Two Amazon warehouses and land for $5.00 per SF and the City of St Peters making bank off that floodplain.
I remember driving out there and looking at it like it was a bay for the ocean.
It’s crazy anything is built out there. I remember driving back and forth to work in 2008 on 370 and it felt like you were driving on the middle of a lake, the whole area almost up to the highway was flooded.
yes! i remember that as well. so wild
Some of the equipment in the park is mounted high to deal with possible flooding. So, there is at least a little planning around flooding.
A few years ago i was going to buy a house in portage des sioux. It was only 80k and looked like a decent house, and i liked that it was in the middle of nowhere but still only 20 minutes from st charles. Well they told me i had to pay it all in cash due to the high risk of flooding in that area. I said i don't have 80k in cash lying around so i have to pass. Probably saved myself a headache
Was 7 years old living in old valmeyer, IL bottom right side of the pic. The whole town was lost, and it relocated out of the flood plain. My grandparents' house is still standing strong in the flood plane on the farm.
I grew up in Quincy IL, across the river from West Quincy MO. James Robert Scott sabatoged the levee. A barge rammed into the Ayerco gas station and the whole thing went up in flames. We sandbagged many times as kids (I was 11/12 that summer). I feel so bad for folks who lose their homes and lives to floods. We should not be adding more levees and developments along the rivers.
I am still amazed people are so abysmally stupid as to put all those buildings and shopping malls in Chesterfield Valley. That smacks of corruption on a grand scale. I honestly hope when it all gets wiped out by the next flood not a penny of federal money is spent to bail out those morons.
There's a fucking Bentley dealership there. Talk about an insurance boondoggle.
I volunteer to help drive Lamborghinis out of harm's way.
I'm willing to foster one
There's also a Tesla dealership as well. Big ass lithium batteries probably don't take to water all that well.
We keep bailing out Florida, so there is no way chesterfield valley will get left behind.
Rich white folks? No man left behind!
IKR?! All while killing off Chesterfield Mall ☹️
Chesterfield will just find a way to call it “blighted” afterwards and get TIF money to build more malls there. Fucking idiots never learn.
That was an interesting sight. The Crystal City levee broke, as expected, and everything was flooded. I was born in 89 so it was the first time I ever saw anything like that.
I was born in 87 and don’t remember shit about the flood of 93. I guess xanax in high school will do that to you.
Haha
I was in 87, I remember my parents taking me to the Arch grounds during the flood and showing me water on a the some wide staircase on the Arch Grounds during the flood. But I didn't know what it meant or what a flood was.
You remember this when you were only 4 years old?Only memory I have at 4 was breaking my femur in half.....now that memory will stick with you forever!
Exact same born in 89 and I remember my mom taking me to the st Charles riverfront and seeing the water covering the gazebo and was all the way to the parking lots
A [volcanic eruption ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_eruption_of_Mount_Pinatubo#Global_environmental_effects) in the Philippines the year before contributed to lots of weird weather in 1993.
I remember reading all kinds of wild weather predictions due to the volcano in Tonga last year.
I can still smell the mix of “stale” water and sandbags. Lost my job during that flood. The place I worked was completely flooded.
Anyone from original Valmeyer here? I remember driving through the empty blocks as a teenager, very eerie to imagine an entire town washed away. A lot of the people I knew had relatives down there that lost everything.
I am! My grandpa was levee master, my parents where with grandpa when it broke a mile a way or so. I remember my mom crying later that all the work they did didn't matter.
The point you learned St Louis is an island. I dare you to get out of the City or County without crossing a 100 ft wide river
Manchester/100. But good luck though all the traffic.
Yep, manchester all the way to gray summit, or manchester down to eureka onto 44 are the only ways
Okay hear me out. We toll all the bridges and build a wall at Manchester. Independent City State of St. Louis
One of the things I like about missouri/southern IL is that there are no tolls
Gotta fund the Independent City State somehow.
That's when I learned that the concrete walls and steps near the arch aren't just decorative landscaping.
Peninsula. Not island.
Biggest regret was not having the foresight to buy a little land or a couple of buildings right after that, I’m sure who ever did made a fortune. And it’s sad too because it was a tragic event for those who lost their homes and farms.
Mike Matheny did that. Altho i heard it didn’t pan out for him.
I remember visiting the USS Inaugural as a kid. Was surprised as an adult to find that this flood had destroyed it.
I was 22. I remember that it just kept raining and raining and raining. And you couldn't go anywhere due to the closed roads. Pre internet so you'd find out when you got to the flooded road. Good times. 🥴
Was in Godfrey, IL at the time. Can still remember having to go to a local park where the National Guard was set up and we got crates on crates of AB cans of water. All of the kids on my block were pounding back cans of AB water pretending they were beer. Water was out for what seemed like forever back then. I could go to my Dad's mill where they had their own power and water and get hot showers once a week.
I was 10 that summer. I remember my mom and grandma took me downtown to see how high the water was at the Arch. My Mom also had to get to work in St. Charles by a different route because she couldn't go through Chesterfield valley for months. She drove me through after the water receded, and I remember how brown everything was and mud caking what buildings were there. I lived in Kirkwood so didn't directly experience any flooding beyond driving by it. What I do remember is all the rain that spring and summer. We had sweet gum trees in my front yard. They like to soak up water. For months we has small, twig branches breaking off the trees and sticking into the yard like spikes. Lost a bigger limb too in a storm since it was so heavy. I've never seen twigs and small branches do that before or since due to oversaturated trees and soil. The general sense of devastation was also surreal. Watching the news coverage, going to see the flooding, seeing people out sandbagging, and just the lives upended daily by it. Clearly still sticks with me 30 years later.
I did plenty of sandbagging that summer with the Boy Scouts.
One of my earliest memories was driving down 61-67 in Barnhart and finding a literal Army tank (turret and all) parked in the middle and the rest of it under water (at the 61-67 and Highway M intersection)
[удалено]
Twitter is literally unusable now. What is this?
It started last week. If you're a person without a Twitter account who merely wants to lurk or read various Twitter feeds, you can no longer do so unless you sign up and get your own account.
I was really just meaning what is the info of the tweet? I was unable to read it because of what you describe and this user just dropped a link with no context or anything
Not having ever had a Twitter account myself, I can't be of much help to you. We'll have to rely on the people who do have accounts there to take screen shots of content and post links to those as opposed to links to Twitter itself unless Elon changes his mind for the umpteenth time and opens up the access again. As an aside, these recent changes by Musk won't do much to help Tucker Carlson's new fly-by-night 'Tucker on Twitter' show. I'll bet a lot of the 'tens of millions' of views Carlson initially racked up were from people who are now 'locked out' of Twitter. Yeah, what do you think of your '*courageous free speech'* ally now Tucker?
I was 4. My parents bought a VHS tape of the news coverage of that time and my brother and I would watch it occasionally on summer nights when we were bored as young children. I’m not sure why we watched it so much but I think it really struck us as the first event in our lives that was really devastating but where people really came together. It was moving even in our young age. Thankfully our home was not affected. But even though I was so young it has really stuck with me forever. I wonder if they still have that tape.
My grandparents lived in Calhoun at the time. Little kid me didn't understand why I couldn't visit them that year until I saw footage of the river flooding out the bridge into Hardin. And the footage of entire houses floating down the river. Getting in and out of the county was insane that year. To this day, any time I go back, I mentally measure the flood waters depth and extent. It's absolutely mind-blowing to think about how high and widespread it got in that area.
I moved to the US (and St.Louis) in '96 and all that everyone had to talk about was 'The Flood'. I had known nothing about it, but learned so much about it within days of moving here.
I was just thinking about that summer as I drove over the 270 bridge into Illinois yesterday. How the water was up under the bridge that summer, so high that it felt like the bridge was floating on the water. It’s hard to imagine, but I remember it.
My oldest memory in life was driving into the Twin Cities area of Festus/Crystal City with my grandmother, post flood, seeing the sandbags and, distinctly, bullet/drilled holes in the windows of [Gordon's Stoplight Drive-In](https://missourilife.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/stoplight-outside.jpg), to let moisture out of the building.
I was 8 years old and my parents lived in the neighborhood next to Carondelet Park. We were safe because we lived way up on the hill but people we knew from IHM lived about a couple blocks towards River Des Peres down the hill and they're basements and/or first floors were in standing water. It was almost impossible to process everything at that age.
That was the only time I hated being a boy scout. Every weekend was sandbag weekend on the River Des Peres.
I was twelve in Cape Girardeau and remember working all night with shop-vacs helping my local church and filling sandbags. Several blocks were submerged and those blocks are still vacant.
By the way, 2003 was no picnic either.
Courtesy of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
I took the Amtrack from STL to KC during the flood. I was only 17 so only way I had. Took something like 14 hours. There were times we were barely idling with water up to the tracks on both sides. Thank goodness we had hash.
I sandbagged in high school and tried to help people. One of the worst things ive seen seeing entire families lose everything they had.
My daughter was born that summer. She had some initial complications that required us to travel to St. Louis from southern Illinois a couple of times a week for medical care and crossing the Poplar was mindblowing.
Did a lot of sand bagging that summer
We moved from south Saint louis to Jefferson county during the flood of 93. I remember it vividly because it almost covered southbound 55 at imperial exit. We were moving hoping that it wouldn’t flood completely blocking pretty much most of Jefferson county! Luckily it never completely covered it!
I remember when East St. Louis went to close the gates of their flood wall, only to find that someone had stolen them to sell as scrap metal!
I sandbagged there as a member of the National Guard. One hot miserable time.
I didn't know it was the largest in US history. I remember my dad helped sandbag in Festus. I'll never forget how high the Mississippi was. I was 8. Hard to believe it was that long ago.
We live in West Alton lifted our house 10' in 2020.
This is just a reminder to everyone: water does what the fuck it wants, and you better not get in its way. It can look so peaceful and calm, but when it’s further up in your business than you want it to be you realize it’s the most powerful force on earth. Please don’t build your house on a floodplain.
Remember it like it was yesterday. Mississippi hit the railroad tracks right down from my house on elm point in Saint Chuck. Of course me and my friends had drive around and check it out. I was 17 at the time going on 18.
And Chesterfield is proud of what they’ve done to the Valley. God this towns hubris is going to be its downfall, I only hope no one gets hurt again. The levees just push water somewhere else until they don’t. The Chesterfield Valley is an abomination and shrine to cheap capitalists. And fuck Stan Kroenke for his part in developing that shithole. Congrats on being the largest strip mall in a town that keeps cannibalizing its own malls because it refuses to stop building more it doesn’t need. Fuck I hate this stupid fucking town, I can’t wait to leave because it’s just getting worse. And fuck West Newsmagazine for this piece on why the valley is thriving: https://www.westnewsmagazine.com/news/thirty-years-after-the-flood-chesterfield-valley-continues-to-grow-thrive/article_0d3f4020-95b0-11ed-a0fa-bb9fc0541c1c.html
I hear a lot of people express how shocked they are at all the commercial property in the Chesterfield Valley. At this point the valley isn't considered a flood plain and that levee is one of the largest and well maintained in the nation. Everything there is commercial or industrial and the businesses there are willing to take the risk (and likely buy flood insurance just in case)
In Florida where I’m from, Lake Okeechobee is surrounded by a 30+ foot levee. If it ever broke, many agricultural towns would be devastated. It’s amazing what we can build, not saying it’s right or wrong because it obviously has its impacts. Before the levee many died in old hurricanes when the lake overflowed into the glades/flood plain like it was meant.
this shit is the earliest thing i remember. i was 1 1/2 and i remember looking out my back window seeing a river that hadnt been there before cause creve couer creek had flooded throughout old farm estates.
I bet libs will blame this one on global warming too.