Missouri assesses flood damage as other US states remain under water

Missouri Governor Jay Nixon on Saturday toured communities ravaged by flooding that killed at least 31 people in several states and forced large-scale evacuations, as the danger of rising waters shifted to Arkansas and beyond.

Nixon visited Eureka and Cape Girardeau in eastern Missouri, where floodwaters caused widespread damage, and announced the federal government had approved his request to declare an emergency to help with the massive cleanup and recovery now under way. The governor described the scale of the flood damage as other worldly.

"It's almost as if you're living on some other planet," he said, standing near a growing pile of debris in a park in Eureka, about an hour's drive west of St. Louis on the banks of the Meramec River, which flows into the Mississippi.