you went to the next block, it was 15 feet deep. you did see houses that appear to be poking out of the water, but those were built on stilts, and again, like we've seen elsewhere the owners thought they had built them so high they would never, ever flood, but this is the year that never, ever went out the window. anderson? >> martin, what's that behind you? >> reporter: let me show you. the city of vicksburg, as i say, is now under the gun. what they have built here is a wooden dike. this actually had to be constructed in three days. there was nothing here that prevented the river from flowing into the heart of downtown vicksburg. so the city workers built this thing. it is built out of oak and poplar. they started using railroad ties, but they ran out of those. so they began putting them down, layer after layer, tar in between, and then they've got these steel trusses right here that are also holding it up. the chains, by the way, because