ALTON, Ill. — Even for a city on a bluff, it's hard to tell where the Mississippi River ends and Alton, Illinois, begins.
"When we left Saturday morning around 9 o’clock, this whole area was completely dry," said Mary Clark, referring to the intersection of Broadway and Piasa in downtown Alton.
When we spoke to Mary about 24 hours after her first visit, the intersection was flooded with at least four inches of Mississippi River water.
Nearby Argosy Casino was also forced to close because of the dangerously high river levels.
"It floods here a lot but nowhere near this level," Clark said.
Still, the city sings on. In some cases literally. Sunday afternoon, a band performed for patrons of the Kentucky Derby Festival. They had a smaller crowd than expected but decided to go on with the show.
"We’re not new to this," Chris Downer, who attended the festival, joked.
Downer said he decided to drive downtown anyway because flooding just comes with the territory.
"I mean we’re used to it. We’ve seen it. We know it’s around," he said.
But for businesses like Tony's Restaurant, even though it looks like business as usual out front, it was all hands on deck down below.
Down in their basement, they had five-and-a-half feet of water. The levels rose about 2 feet alone from May 2 to May 5.
"Through the basement floors, it’s coming through the walls. The ground is just so saturated. It just comes up from underneath," owner Paul Ventimiglia said.
It happens so often at Tony's, Paul measures the last flood in months, not years.
"The crest was what, April 3rd of last month? And we’ve got a foot more than that," Ventimiglia said.
Still, with generators humming and customers still coming, he's confident he'll be just fine as long as the water crests as expected.
"It goes about another foot, we’ll have some trouble," the owner said.
Because this may be a city on a bluff, but everyone around here knows the river doesn't.
"We don’t think this is going to be the last one this year," Ventimiglia said.
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