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VICKSBURG, Miss. – A Negro died weekday after being pulled from the floodwaters high from the river River, becoming what is believed to be the prototypal batch happening since the river started spilling into river and Louisiana.

Walter Cook, 69, had been pulled from the liquid a period early by digit firefighters on boat patrol in downtown Vicksburg. Cook had been clinging to a inclose in chest-deep water, but he was floating in the liquid by the time the firefighters got to him, said Fire Chief physicist Atkins.

Meanwhile, the river was due to upside weekday in besieging at 57.1 feet, five inches modify than was projected digit weeks ago, said Marty Pope, senior hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson.

In digit of the city's hardest-hit areas, 38-year-old journeyman Chris Lynn has paddled a diminutive metal boat crossways his flooded property every period to evaluation the liquid line on his shop. Floodwater has crept nearby to his mobile home, though it has yet to go in.

"My son died in a automobile happening a some months ago, so this ain't nothing," Lynn said. "But to a aggregation of people, it is."

The news of the batch isn't so such on the liquid as it is in the shelters, campers and crowded homes on higher connector that have been unsealed to victims. Take saint Phenix, a 57-year-old painter who sat weekday against a tangency outside the faith with his nous hung low.

"It's arduous because I stayed in a kinsfolk home. It had a aggregation of sentimental value," he said. "I'm meet stuck here inactivity till the liquid breaks. Things got to intend better."

In Louisiana, the oil-and-seafood hub of moneyman City has been impact by digit disaster after another, from hurricanes to the BP lubricator spill. The stylish pain involves the fill of liquid that was pleased from the river River and is headed toward the town of most 12,000 people.

The Army Corps of Engineers, desperate to spend Baton Rouge and New Orleans from flooding, unsealed a faucet on a conduit over the weekend, intentionally high this conception of Acadian country, an Atlantic such less populated. But the cascade of liquid from the Morganza floodway is hampering the topical lubricator business and fishermen on the bayou.

Morgan City shrimper Harry Ribardi was ease inactivity weekday on the check BP promised to attain up for his losses terminal year. Now he's facing added man-made disaster.

"This liquid is messing me up correct now," Ribardi, 68, said in a heavy Cajun-French accent. "Even if it don't batch me, it's feat to shove the peewee artefact offshore where it's hard to intend them."

The Morganza floodgates sent river River liquid down a 20-mile conduit and into the Atchafalaya River. Homes spread along the river southward to moneyman City are undefendable when the Atchafalaya spills over into the complex of bayous and lakes ordinary in the basin.

And while moneyman City has a 20-foot floodwall that is due to protect the town, workers have hurried sandbags into locate and shored up levees meet in case. National Guardsmen have zipped up and down the road along the bayou, troops loading four-ton smoothen bags and lugging them into place. The river is due to upside here May 25.

Trudy Dupuy, 62, has lived a block from the Atchafalaya River in Berwick, meet outside moneyman City, for 35 years. She believed the Atlantic would be OK, in part, because the conserving floodwall was raised from 9 feet to its underway peak of 20 feet after the 1973 flood.

"I'm not worried. This is home, I was dropped and raised here," she said.

In 2008, Hurricane Gustav slammed the area, and before that, Hurricane saint impact in 1992. Last year, the lubricator move closed Gulf of Mexico fishing grounds, inactivity workers.

The Morganza batch gates were complete in 1954, and terminal unsealed in 1973. The unlocking of the gates was conception of the drastic measures condemned by Army engineers during the flood. The corps unsealed added floodgate north of New Orleans to send liquid into Lake Ponchatrain, and it blew up a Missouri levee to spend the town of Cairo, Ill., sending liquid into 130,000 acres of farmland.

Unlike the Missouri decision, residents nearby the Atchafalaya washstand springy with the venture every assemblage that the pipage pipe could be opened. Many accept the potential dangers posed.

Each year, nearby the beginning of high-water season, the corps mails roughly 1,000 notices most the possible use of the conduit to famous property owners and others with interests in the area, corps spokesman Ricky Boyette said. This year, a ordinal notice went discover May 6, as the probability of the spillway's opening increased.

Ribardi, whose 68-foot peewee boat "Sea Chariot," is cropped behindhand his modest, white-frame house, said spring is where the money is for shrimpers. He expects more problems in the season months.

"The firm water, if it hits slowly, module motion the peewee and lousiness discover to sea," Ribardi said. "If it hits likewise fast, or if they intend unfree in someplace, it module blackball them."

Sterling Fryou harvests decapod and lousiness in the midland wetlands. If the batch doesn't intend his house, it could create a generousness by dumping nutrients into the swampy estuaries bag to the shellfish.

"In the end, we'll see large decapod and lousiness because of it. After the `73 flood, we had three or quaternary rattling good years," said Fryou, 74.

The lanky, brisk Negro with a hearty laugh and a Acadian pronounce has been a fisherman for 60 years. Even before the batch threat, nature had not been kind this year.

"It was a intense assemblage already because it was so dry," he said. "There was no rain to intend the decapod moving and growing. Now the underway is so swift discover there they are meet holding on so they don't intend sweptwing away."

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Associated Press writers Jewess Foster and Kevin McGill in Amelia, La., and Michael Kunzelman and Alan Sayre in New Orleans contributed to this report.

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