Skip to main content
Saturday, November 14, 2026Nov 14
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Illinois, Missouri assess damage, cleanup after flooding

Residents pile ruined furniture, appliances and clothes along the street for disposal crews to pick up after last week's flooding from the south fork of the Sangamon River, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016, in Kincaid, Ill. Gov. Bruce Rauner toured flood-damaged homes Sunday in the 1,400-resident central Illinois town.
Residents pile ruined furniture, appliances and clothes along the street for disposal crews to pick up after last week's flooding from the south fork of the Sangamon River, Sunday, Jan. 3, 2016, in Kincaid, Ill. Gov. Bruce Rauner toured flood-damaged homes Sunday in the 1,400-resident central Illinois town.

By Associated Press 4 min read

CLoser to home

* Several agencies are working together to control rising waters

KINCAID, Ill. – The Mississippi River and many of its tributaries continued their retreat Sunday from historic and deadly winter flooding, leaving amid the silt a massive cleanup and recovery effort likely to take weeks if not months.

The flood, fueled by more than 10 inches of rain over a three-day period that began Christmas Day, is blamed for 25 deaths in Illinois and Missouri, reflecting Sunday’s discovery of the body of a second teenager who drowned in central Illinois’ Christian County.

The Mississippi River was receding except in the far southern tip of both states. The Meramec River, the St. Louis-area tributary of the Mississippi that caused so much damage last week, already was below flood stage in the hard-hit Missouri towns of Pacific and Eureka and dropping elsewhere.

But worries surfaced anew Sunday along the still-rising Illinois River north of St. Louis, where crests near the west-central Illinois towns of Valley City, Meredosia, Beardstown and Havana were to approach records before receding in coming days.