Homes, Crops, Casinos Washed Out
ROMANS: It could be the most destructive year of weather we have ever seen. A new report in "USA Today" says the U.S. is on pace to spend a record amount of money cleaning up weather disasters. So far there have been five weather disasters costing more than a billion dollars each. That includes a blizzard that slammed the Midwest and northeast in January and early February then there was the most destructive tornado outbreak in American history, and back-to-back spring storms in April, that terrorized the Midwest and the south. Total costs so far estimated at $4.25 billion. And now, the Mississippi flood disaster, they're only beginning to survey the damage upstream. Some areas still waiting to be hit, but already the tally for that is over a billion dollars, Ali.</s>VELSHI: That's hard to capture all of this. It's good to get that kind of breakdown of the numbers. The flooding has drowned crops and casinos in Mississippi. It's taking its toll on some of the most poverty stricken areas of the country. They're already talking losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, could be billions by the time the river settles down. Mike Womack has been keeping an eye on the damage. He's the director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency joining us now from Jackson. Mike, thanks for being with us. You know, we've been covering the story over a week. The flooding has been slow moving and it is actually hard to capture on TV because you don't see rushing waters, you just see water rising. You can't tell what it's really getting at. How devastating is this flood to Mississippi?</s>MIKE WOMACK, DIRECTOR OF THE MISSISSIPPI EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY SINCE 2006: Well, we've had some families out of their homes in our northern most counties for about two weeks now. And all along the Mississippi River, there are people who have built elevated homes on the riverside of the levees. And, you know, they had hoped that those homes would never be flooded because of the elevations. But of course, the record crest of this river is pushing water into those homes. In fact, we estimate that every home that's been built on the river side of the levee from Memphis all the way down to the Louisiana line, is flooded.</s>VELSHI: Wow.</s>WOMACK: With the exception of -- if you look at, you know, Vicsburg in the middle of the state, there's about three or four counties just to the south of Vicsburg where it's high elevation along the river and so those homes largely are spared. But then our southern most county, Wilkinson, there's a community of Lake Mary where 75 to 100 homes are flooded and then Fort Adams as well. So really all the way from Memphis to the Louisiana line.</s>VELSHI: You're talking about houses that are built on elevation, but between the levee and the river where you wouldn't have expected flooding to occur, you're saying from Tennessee all the way down, you're seeing flooding possibly all of those homes there. A lot of people in Mississippi in the areas that are being affected by the river, there are a lot of places where there are people with -- nine of the 11 counties, in fact, have poverty rates that are double the national average. How is that affecting the ability to get these people, the information and the help that they need?</s>WOMACK: Well, we're working very hard with the local officials who can best communicate the risk to the citizens that potentially are going to be flooded. We're trying to use local media as well to try to explain what the threat is. And starting Sunday, we'll have a national guard and highway patrol and our wildlife fisheries and parks who will be deployed to the areas that are going to flood, or potentially going to flood, and they'll be assisting in not only trying to make sure the citizens know what the risk is but with the evacuation as necessary.</s>VELSHI: It's interesting to note that in Mississippi 98 percent of the state's agricultural holdings and farms are family owned, not the big corporate owned farms that you think. So they're really are people who are going to take a big hit in Mississippi. Our thoughts are with you, Mike. Thanks for letting us know what's going on there. Mike Womack is the director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency joining us from Jackson, Mississippi. And of course, CNN's coverage of these floods will continue even though we're not expecting some places to crest for another couple of weeks.</s>ROMANS: All right. It's bad enough to have a fender-bender, that usually involves you and another driver and you're irritated. Maybe all the people would slow down on the highway.</s>VELSHI: Sure.</s>ROMANS: How about a fender-bender at an airport? Two planes. Then you've got a lot of people and a -- and air travel that starts to come to a grinding halt. We're going to tell you about a Delta jet that clipped another plane and what happened there.</s>VELSHI: And brain surgery for TV sitcom icon Mary Tyler Moore. Dr. Sanjay Gupta comes -- is going to join us to tell us about the surgery that she chose to have to remove a tumor and how it went, right after the break. It is 45 minutes after the hour.