Nation roundup for April 22

Crests approaching in several towns in Midwest

CLARKSVILLE, Mo. (AP) — An all-too-familiar springtime ritual played out around the nation’s heartland this weekend as volunteers, National Guardsmen and even prison inmates joined together in an effort to ward off fast-rising floodwaters.

Dangerously high waters dotted at least six Midwestern states following torrential rains this past week that dumped up to 7 inches in some locations. Record flooding was possible in some places as dozens of rivers overflowed their banks.

The water levels forced evacuations, closed roads, swamped hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland and shut down much of the upper Mississippi River to barge traffic. Even two Mississippi River bridges were closed. Several Mississippi River towns north of St. Louis were expected to see crests sometime Sunday, including Clarksville, Mo.

Volunteers in the tiny community have worked endlessly since Wednesday to build a makeshift sandbag levee that seemed to be holding as the crest— expected to be 11 feet above flood stage — approached. Even prisoners from far-away Jefferson City were brought in to help.

After four 12-hour days of sandbagging, Trish Connelly, 57, was exhausted but optimistic the town would beat back the river. Her plan to open a new fine arts gallery downtown this weekend were on hold “until we know what the river is going to do,” she said.

“This is frustrating for people,” Connelly said. “This isn’t as bad as 2008, but thank God it stopped raining.”

Gov. Jay Nixon on Saturday toured the unprotected-by-choice town that was also flooded in 2008, 2001, 1998, 1995 and many times before that.

“The water is continuing to rise but it is our full hope and expectation that these walls will hold,” Nixon said of the sandbag levees. Clarksville has a flood protection system in which a temporary levee — aluminum slats filled with sand — can be built if the river rises, but the Mississippi was too quick this time.

Mississippi River levels vary greatly but are typically highest in the spring, so minor flooding is not uncommon. But when river levels exceed flood stage by several feet, serious problems can occur.

Travel was at a standstill on most of the Mississippi between the Quad Cities and St. Louis. The Army Corps of Engineers closed several locks, halting barge traffic. Recreational traffic was halted, too, including the Mark Twain Riverboat that offers excursions at scenic Hannibal, Mo. Owner and pilot Steve Terry has moored the ship since Thursday, with no end in sight.

Even crossing the river was difficult. One of two bridges at Quincy, Ill., closed Friday, and the narrow two-lane bridge at the Missouri town of Louisiana was shut down Saturday. To get across, people in the Louisiana, Mo., area either had to drive 35 miles north to Hannibal, Mo., or 50-plus miles south to suburban St. Louis.

Penny Scranton’s normal 13-minute commute from Rockport, Ill., to the BP convenience store in Louisiana turned into an hour and a half.

“There are others worse off,” she shrugged.

Among those worse off was Louisiana resident Erica Campbell, whose rented home in a low-lying area of town was flooded for the second time in three years. She’s had enough. Campbell, her husband and their eight kids are packing up.

“We’re planning to move to the country — as far away from water as I can get,” Campbell, 35, said.

Smaller rivers across the Midwest were swelling, too. In Illinois, heavy equipment manufacturer Caterpillar will shut down its East Peoria, Ill., factory Sunday as the Illinois River approaches an expected 30-foot crest early next week.

Several Indiana towns were threatened by high water, forcing hundreds of evacuations. The Wabash River in Tippecanoe County reached more than 14 feet above flood stage on Saturday, the highest level since 1958. Indiana Gov. Mitch Pence took a helicopter tour Saturday of damage in Kokomo, Tipton and Elwood.

The mayor of Grand Rapids, Mich., declared a state of emergency Saturday, the same day high water forced the evacuation of the Courtyard Marriott Hotel and an apartment building.

FAA approves resumption of Boeing 787 flights

WASHINGTON (AP) — Boeing’s beleaguered 787 could be flying again within a week after federal officials approved a fix for its batteries, even though the root cause of a fire on one plane and smoke on another still isn’t known.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it would send airlines instructions and publish a notice next week lifting the 3-month-old grounding order that day. Airlines will be able to begin flying the planes again as soon as the new systems are installed and they have approval from safety regulators in their own countries. Dreamliner flights could resume within a week, the agency told members of Congress.

Boeing is eager to get the planes flying. It has stationed 300 workers on 10 teams around the world to do the work, some of it beginning on Friday, 787 chief engineer Mike Sinnett said on a call with reporters. It will take about five days to install the revamped lithium-ion battery system on each plane, he said.

The FAA gave Boeing permission last month to test the revamped system, which includes additional insulation around each of the battery’s eight cells to prevent a short circuit or fire in one of the cells from spreading to the others. The new system also includes enhanced venting of smoke and gas from inside the battery to outside the plane. A strengthened box to hold the battery is an effort to ensure that if a fire were to occur, it wouldn’t escape to the rest of the plane.

Boeing has completed 20 separate tests of the new system, FAA Administrator Michael Huerta told Congress earlier this week.

The system involved in the emergencies in January had been extensively tested, too.

“We always learn more as we dig deeper into things,” Sinnett said. “We have learned a lot about how to test batteries, and to be conservative” in testing.

Boeing had delivered 50 planes to eight airlines in seven countries when a fire erupted in a battery aboard a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Jan. 7. Nine days later another incident forced an emergency landing in Japan by an All Nippon Airways 787. That prompted the FAA and other authorities to ground the entire fleet.

Boeing said new batteries and kits with the parts for the new battery systems have been shipped to Boeing supply centers around the world and are ready to be installed. The 787s will get the fix in approximately the order they were delivered, Boeing said.

The FAA’s action directly affects the six 787s flown by United Airlines, the only U.S. airline with the plane. But aviation authorities in other countries are expected to follow suit swiftly. Boeing deferred questions about approval in other countries to those aviation authorities.

United Airlines already has domestic 787 flights scheduled for May 31. Spokeswoman Christen David said no other schedule changes have been made yet. Its launch of Denver-to-Tokyo Narita flights is still planned for June 10, but that will depend on installing the battery fix by then, she said.

“We are mapping out a return-to-service plan, and we look forward to getting our 787s back in the air,” she said by e-mail.

LOT Polish Airlines spokesman Marek Klucinski noted that they need permission from the European Aviation Safety Agency to resume flights. He said they hope that a decision on Friday would mean they can resume flights in the middle of next week. LOT has two planes, one in Warsaw and one that was stranded in Chicago by the grounding.

Boeing has orders for 840 of the planes from airlines around the globe. The grounding halted deliveries, which were expected to resume “in the weeks ahead,” after it installs the changes on planes at the two factories where they’re assembled, Boeing said. It still expects to hit its target of delivering at least 60 787s this year, and that the battery issue “will have no significant impact” on its financial guidance for the year, the company said.

Boeing shares rose $1.84, or 2 percent, to close at $87.96 on Friday.

The plane’s grounding on Jan. 16, an enormous black eye for Boeing, marked the first time since 1979 that FAA had ordered every plane of a particular type to stay out of the air for safety reasons.

The 787 is Boeing’s newest and most technologically advanced plane. It is the world’s first airliner made mostly from lightweight composite materials. It also relies on electronic systems rather than hydraulic or mechanical systems to a greater degree than any other airliner. And it is the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium ion batteries, which are lighter, recharge faster and can hold more energy than other types of batteries.

The 787 has two identical lithium-ion batteries: One near the front of the plane, which powers cockpit electrical systems, the other toward the rear and used to start an auxiliary power unit while the plane is on the ground, among other functions. The rear battery was involved in the fire and gushed smoke on the plane in Boston, which had recently landed after an overseas flight. It was the front battery that failed on the plane in Japan.

Every item that is part of an airplane, down to its nuts and bolts, must be certified as safe before FAA approves that type of plane as safe for flight. The two events have raised questions about why the FAA and Boeing didn’t uncover problems with the batteries before the FAA certified the plane as safe for flight in 2011. In recent years, the FAA has relied to a greater extent on designated employees of aircraft makers to conduct the safety testing necessary of certification. Some aviation safety experts have questioned whether FAA has the in-house expertise to oversee the safety of cutting-edge technologies that haven’t been in planes before.

Lithium batteries are much more likely to experience uncontrolled high temperatures that can lead to fires if they are damaged, exposed to excessive heat, overcharged or have manufacturing flaws. Despite their safety risks, they are increasingly attractive to aircraft makers as a way to cut weight and thus improve fuel efficiency.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the Boston battery fire and the process by which the FAA certified the 787’s batteries were certified as safe. The board has scheduled a two-day hearing beginning Tuesday at which FAA and Boeing officials are slated to testify.

NTSB officials have said the Boston battery fire began with a short circuit in one of the battery’s eight cells, leading to uncontrolled temperatures and short-circuits in the rest of the battery’s cells. Firefighters who responded to the incident reported dense clouds of white smoke and two small flames on the outside of the box that contained the battery cells.

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