| Omaha's Airport Covered by Flood
OMAHA, April 13 (AP)—Army engineers today abandoned hope of saving Omaha's $4,000,000 airport and Carter Lake, Iowa, from complete inundation by Missouri river flood waters as the angry stream poured through two broken dikes into the ten-square-mile stricken area on the northeastern outskirts of Omaha.
At Hamburg, Iowa, fifty miles south, two hundred families living in the southern portion of the community, which is eleven feet below the normal river level, began leaving their homes after dikes at McPaul and Percival, above-Hamburg, gave way. Residents of McPaul also were ordered to leave their homes. Col. Lewis Pick, United States army division engineer, said there was no chance of stopping the Omaha dike break and that further efforts to save the airport Carter Lake area would not be made.
The river reached its crest at 2:00 a. m. at 22 45 feet, remaining at that level until 7:00 a.m. It then started receding slowly at the rate of about one-tenth of a foot
an hour.
From four to six feet of water was expected to cover the airport within the next forty-eight hours. Two-thirds of the field stood in several feet of water this morning,
said Airport Manager William R. Milner.
From two directions through widening gaps in the broken dikes, the swollen river spilled into the airport and Carter Lake.
Red Cross and other rescue workers worked late last night to evacuate the last of
pproximately one thousand families living in the ten square mile stricken area which is on the northwestern out- skirts 0f Omaha. Other scores of families had been removed earlier from north and east Omaha as the crest moved downstream.
Reno Evening Gazette - Reno, Nevada, Tuesday, April 13, 1943
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