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BATON ROUGE, La. – Travis Morace has been running boats on the river for digit decades, witnessing every of the powerful river's whatever moods. He's seen it calm and uncreased as a new paved road and endured jarring rides filled with treacherous twists and bumps.

But even old river pilots impact never seen anything same the roily underway today racing to the Gulf of Mexico. Since outflow floods pushed the river to historic heights, America's busiest midland way has embellish digit of its most hard to navigate.

"If you're not afraid of it, you should be, because it has a aggregation of ways of hurting you," Morace said this hebdomad as he tardily nudged his tugboat, the Bettye M. Jenkins, along the river bank nearby Vidalia, La.

The broad liquid brings with it a host of hazards. Debris is everywhere, and the unco swift underway makes it arduous for pilots to go upstream. Good phenomenon fastening if you're headlike downstream. For those who attain their experience on the water, the river is a reputable opponent in the prizewinning of times. Now it meet stark frightens them.

On Friday, the river at Vidalia looked more same a stormy ocean than a river. Whitecaps frothed low the denture that connects the city to Natchez, Miss., and whirlpools churned across the channel.

In whatever places, obstacles were hiding meet beneath the surface. Some trees in town were nearly submerged. A sport band protruded most 2 feet above the liquid at a flooded-out court.

The underway was filled with wreckage of every sort, including whole trees and long, naif ribbons of vegetation. A nearby crocodilian struggled against the water's pull, finally finding refuge on the porch of a building part concealed by the rising water.

The broad liquid and fast underway caused at least digit barges to fortuity lax from a towboat weekday and impact a bridge. Three barges of callus sank, the towboat's owner said. No digit was hurt.

The barges went downbound nearby Baton Rouge, suasion the Coast Guard to near a five-mile debase of the river. Officials did not undergo when it would reopen.

Earlier in the week, the Coast Guard shortly winking a 15-mile movement of the river nearby town because of the underway and concerns that the wakes from expiration vessels would place pressure on floodwalls protecting communities. The wakes were also impact floodwater into whatever businesses.

Although the river was presently reopened nearby Natchez, barge and labour traffic is ease existence tightly regulated.

The Coast Guard normally asks vessels to reassert a minimum pace of 3 indication feat upstream. But these days, they crapper go only most 1 indication to avoid generating wakes. When way south, whatever impact trouble fastening in the fast current.

"You communicate me, they should near it downbound altogether," said Jerry Batson, officer of the labour Gladys Batson. "It's awful venturous for some vessel."

On Wednesday, Batson watched as a dish pushing digit blank chemical barges stalled patch trying to transfer low the Vidalia-Natchez bridge.

"It almost impact the denture championship up," he said.

Before the river began to flood, the Gladys Batson routinely pushed four, 200-foot barges at a time. But the underway today makes it hard to steer or to advise that such cargo.

Farther southward in Louisiana, the broad liquid also presents a challenge to pilots who guide oceangoing vessels into ports from New metropolis to Baton Rouge.

Michael Lorino, nous of the Associated Branch Pilots, said pilots impact to maneuver finished hard currents prefabricated worse by the river's whatever bends, and they must meet absent from sandbars shapely by the huge amount of congest carried downbound during high-water season, commonly in the spring.

They impact to learn, and re-learn, the river every day, every patch dodging towboats, voyage liners, ferries and large foodstuff and chemical ships.

Bill Wilson, whose consort carries most 300,000 passengers a assemblage on its town steamboat in New Orleans, said his captains impact a beatific relation with river pilots and impact unitedly to meet safe, especially when the liquid is high.

"We pretty such meet discover their way. They're the big guys," said Wilson, vice president and generalized trainer of the New metropolis Steamboat Co.

Many ships entering the river are bound for the Port of South Louisiana, which lines both sides of the river northerly of New Orleans. It's the nation's maximal inaugural in terms of tonnage, and it handles more than half of American foodstuff exports.

Barges travel from farm realty downbound the Missouri, Ohio and river rivers. When they intend to the port, the crops are place aboard large foodstuff carriers for shipment overseas. Or the foodstuff is place into gangly elevators to await after shipment.

The inaugural handles most 60,000 barges a year, along with 4,500 to 5,000 deep-draft vessels.

That kind of advertizement traffic effectuation approaching the river is costly. Huge ships inactivity to verify on load crapper separate up expenses of $40,000 a day. Port officials feature the total cost of a single day's approaching crapper crowning $300 million.

When the liquid began to climb, the transport industry was digit of the large proponents of inaugural spillways to divert immoderateness liquid from the Mississippi. The Army Corps of Engineers prototypal opened the Bonnet Carre conduit northerly of New Orleans, then the Morganza conduit northerly of Baton Rouge.

Those actions helped ready ports unstoppered and eased pressure on the levees protecting Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Ports downstream are ease unstoppered until the inflate of liquid arrives. But in Vidalia, most 140 miles upriver from New Orleans, a aggregation of playing has become to a halt. The river crested in that Atlantic weekday at nearly 14 feet above batch stage, a take that was modify than prototypal predicted but most threesome feet higher than the 1937 record.

Forecasters said it could be life before the liquid begins to recede.

Carla Jenkins, whose kinsfolk has been in the towing playing for generations, said her boats stopped accepting impact orders Tuesday. And at a spot where barges are commonly tied up, brown river liquid sweeps over threesome buoys in the river. The barges are gone.

"I told everyone to become and intend them," she said. "I couldn't indorse they would be innocuous now. I've never seen anything same this and never wish to again."

Her offices, shapely between the river and the levee and stagnant atop 10-foot pilings, today impact individual feet of liquid in them.

The river has torn soured the steps and swept absent the wheelchair ramp. Acres of realty where she stores limestone gravel are today beneath as such as 30 feet of water. She estimates she's losing $70,000 to $80,000 a hebdomad in towing alone — in constituent to losses from the gravel business.

For a diminutive cause same Batson, the batch could be financially devastating, but he insists he won't stake onto the river until it quiets down.

"You couldn't scramble me and attain me go discover there now," he said.

___

Sayre reportable from New Orleans. Associated Press illustrator Alicia A. Caldwell in Natchez, Miss., contributed to this report.

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