Cheap Marc Jacobs Hobo attempt to prevent flooding

Parts of the town of Melville not protected by levees were under a mandatory evacuation order. The shelves inside the gas station — temporarily opened so people could fill up before leaving town — were

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barren save for some soft drinks and motor oil.

And in Butte La Rose, a hamlet about 50 miles downstream from the Morganza Spillway, Chalmers Wheat was one of the few people still lining his home with plastic and sandbags.

"It's almost like a ghost town," said Wheat as he and his brother, Chandler, made final preparations before leaving for higher ground.

The opening of the Morganza was the latest attempt to prevent flooding of major population centers along the Mississippi, which has been swollen by unusually heavy rains and runoff from winter snows.

Earlier this month, the Army Corps of Engineers blew up a levee in Missouri, sending water across farmland and rural areas to protect the city of Cairo, Ill. The corps' decision to open the Morganza Spillway was based on the same premise: that it was best to intentionally flood sparsely populated areas with a relatively slow, controlled stream of water than risk catastrophic floods by subjecting levees to more than they were built to handle.