scenes from the uprising that s left hundreds dead. also, i ll speak to the wife of a political activist. an activist herself. her husband has been taken, arrested. she doesn t know where he is. or what s happened to him. she s now in hiding, but she s determined to speak out. she wants her voice heard. a watery state of emergency throughout the south. the mississippi river cresting at a record level in memphis. flooding on the move. we ll get a live update from martin savidge in memphis, next. [ woman ] bathing suits!
across the south, the lower midwest, about 3 million acres of farmland are flooded tonight and the waters are still rising along the mississippi river. here s what it looks like in memphis, leaving as many as a thousand properties under water. the flooding is moving steadily south. take a look at vicksburg, mississippi, historic town hit hard by flood waters. the river hasn t crested there yet. st. mary parish, they re piling up sand bags to save the church there. some 26 parishes in the state have declared states of emergencies. in new orleans, the river is already at flood stage and the army corps of engineers is opening more bays at a spillway that directs water into lake pontchartrain. they ve also warned they may open another spillway which would spare new orleans while flooding southeastern louisiana instead. martin savidge joins us now.
that s not floating. and what they are doing here is to use these portable bladders or aqua barriers to fill them up with water from the river and use that as pretty much the sandbags and creates almost a watertight seal and done a good job to protect the gold strike casino here, and the best part of this technology is environmentally friendly, and you flush out the water when you are done and pack them up on trucks and get them out of here. sandbags obviously a little bit more work and little bit dirtier, and it is cresting now, randi, but just like in memphis and just like in cairo, this is going to take excruciatingly a long time for it to get out of here and then the cleanup effort begins. that is going to be the headache in the next several months. randi? h. well,aey are making a great use of the river water. yes, and taking some off of
tennessee, anywhere in red, this is the area dealing with the flooding. roughly it s about the size of italy. very wide area. many are dealing with the flooding. the worst is going to be downstream from memphis. let s show you what it looks like in tunica, mississippi. residents are evacuating. this is a big gambling area. a lot of money made in this region and it s shut down because of all the flooding. we re dealing with major to moderate flooding up and down the mississippi. we re going to talk about this through the month of may as i take you over to the graphic. talk about memphis. technically the river is still cresting along the mississippi in memphis but we re expecting more cresting as we go through the next several days. greenville, may 16, vicksburg, may 19, running about five meters above flood stage and getting down toward new orleans region, riffly about a meter over. that s going to be moderate and
it is calling for rain later this week, something they don t need. jay gray, it is just appalling there. i know the people there have been suffering and we wish all of them well. thank you so much, jay gray, in memphis. in syria today, snipers are reportedly opening fire from rooftops in the country s third largest city as military tanks crush revolts from the mediterranean sea. the outskirts of the capital. witnesses say that armed forces are going door to door, rounding up hundreds of protesters. president bashir al assad appears to be tightening his grip over the country despite weeks of demonstrations and u.s.-backed sanctions. thousands of people are trying to flee the bloodshed in libya, many by setting sail in homemade rafts. a ship caring up to 600 migrants sunk off the coast. the number of victims is unclear. richard engel joins us live now from benghazi. first on libya, where you are now, what is the latest situation in terms of gadhafi