KROTZ SPRINGS, La. (AP) — Phones at the police department in the little southern Louisiana town of Krotz Springs rang nonstop Saturday as residents sought information on the latest road closings and evacuation routes as Morganza spillway was opened for just the second time, threatening the community with flooding.

A steel, 10-ton section of the spillway was slowly raised Saturday afternoon, sending a torrent of Mississippi River water toward the Atchafalaya River basin. It was the first time the spillway had been opened since 1973 and was done to relieve pressures that the high, swift river exerts on levees protecting heavily populated areas down the Mississippi, including Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Opening the spillway threatens wildlife, people, towns and farms to the west and south.

About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be affected.

At Krotz Springs’ town hall, inundation maps from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were passed out, along with sandbags. Officials said the water could get as high as 25 feet in some areas, but a man shoveling dirt into sandbags to protect his home complained that it wasn’t clear where those heights would be seen.

“That map gives us no elevation, so how do you know? Five to 10 feet above what?” said E.J. Marcotte, 35, filling sandbags with friend Doug Turner.

Turner, also 35, packed sandbags into the bed of his pickup truck, to construct a barrier around his home, which is outside levees that protect Krotz Springs. Amid uncertainty, he said he was readying for more water than the neighborhood got the last time the Morganza was opened.

“If we get two feet more than what was in 1973, then it will be in my home. I’m just sandbagging up to my floor,” Turner said. “I’m preparing for my own estimates.”

Along the west bank of the Atchafalya River, residents packed their furniture, appliances and family photos in anything that could roll out of town: moving trucks, rental vans, flatbed trailers, pickup trucks, travel trailers and RVs.

With the worst of the flooding for Krotz Springs projected to be more than a day away, the Louisiana National Guard and state transportation department workers Saturday continued to construct a makeshift levee to protect a 240-home neighborhood outside the flood control structures ringing the town.

One of those homes was where Monita Reed grew up and still lives.

Her bedroom furniture, a sofa and packed boxes filled a rental truck and a borrowed trailer, which were headed east to a rented storage space in Baton Rouge and southwest to a family-owned warehouse in Lafayette.

She was keeping a bed and a television in place at the tan clapboard house.

“I’m going to stay until they tell us to leave,” she said as her nephews and family friends helped load her belongings. “Hopefully, we won’t see much water and then I can move back in.”

Closer to the coast, in seafood- and oil-dependent Morgan City, the water was expected to arrive in about three days.

Michael Grubb, whose home is located just outside the Morgan City floodwalls, hired a contractor this week to raise his house from two to eight feet off the ground. It took a crew of 20 workers roughly 17 hours to jack up the house onto wooden blocks.

“I wanted to save this house desperately,” Grubb, 54, said. “This has tapped us out. This is our life savings here, but it’s worth every penny.”

Three feet of water flooded Grubb’s home in 1973, the last time Morganza was opened. Water from the swollen Atchafalaya already is creeping into his backyard, but Grubb is confident his home will stay dry.

Grubb and his wife, Tawney White, plan to ride out the flood in their home even though he expects to be surrounded by water within days. He has a generator and a boat for grocery runs.

“This is our home. How could we leave our home?” he said.

Many residents who live inside the city’s floodwalls expressed confidence Saturday that they will hold back the water.

C.E. Bourg stopped by a hardware store in the shadow of the floodwalls to buy grease for his lawnmower and paint — the items on his “honey-do list.”

“It’s business as usual,” he said.

Flood waters came perilously close to overtopping Morgan City’s floodwalls in 1973. Since then, they have been raised to 24 feet. A segment of the old floodwall, with a line that shows the high water mark on May, 28, 1973, stands as a testament to the city’s brush with disaster.

Bourg, an attorney, said he represented a worker who was injured on the 70s-era floodwall project and learned about how they were built. “I got a copy of the plans,” he said.

“This one’s built right, unlike the ones in New Orleans,” he said, referring to floodwalls along drainage and navigation canals that failed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Rows of sandbags were piled up outside nearly every home in Stephensville, a community near Morgan City where many homes abut manmade bayous. Merleen Acosta, 58, waited in line for three hours Saturday morning to get her sandbags filled by prisoners from the St. Martin Parish jail. She was back in line early in the afternoon.

Flood waters inundated Acosta’s home in 1973, driving her out for several months. The thought of losing her home again was so stressful that it was making her sick.

“I was throwing up at work,” she said.

Monroe La Coste, 34, worked Saturday stacking sandbags in a ring outside his home,.

“Six high should cover it,” he said. “I’m going to be ready just in case it’s not.”

———

Kunzelman reported from Morgan City and Stephensville. AP reporter Mary Foster contributed to this story from Morganza, La.