Asked and Answered | Bob Biram: A Missouri Village at the Center of It All

While the village, 62 miles east-northeast of Springfield, is happily obscure, said its mayor, Bob Biram, it has had at least one other interesting occurrence: During the Civil War, according to local legend, a young man now known as Grandpa Hicks fought for the South, while another youngster, Grandpa Benson, chose the North. During a battle, Grandpa Benson was said to have captured Grandpa Hicks and proceeded to lock him in a root cellar. Grandpa Hicks was able to dig his way to freedom with a pocketknife. After the war, they met up again in Plato and became lifelong friends.

Mr. Biram, 66, discusses the village’s newfound fame.

Q. What has been the response in Plato to the news that it is at the very center of America?

A. Well, it’s something that doesn’t happen very often. People are talking about it. They are planning big things. The school is planning some sort of program.

Q. Tell me more about the plans.

A. It will be May 9. The band will play. The color guard will be there. There will be barbecues. (In the background, the mayor’s wife, Susan Biram, can be heard prompting him). The choir will sing patriotic songs. We’ll have the celebration right in the middle of town, which is not very big — about half a mile either way. I think we can fit everybody in town, but I’m not sure. We haven’t tried it before.

Q. How many people live in Plato?

A. At the time of the census there were just 109 people. We’re down to about 100 now. We’re near Fort Leonard Wood, so people are in and out all the time.

Q. What’s there to do in town?

A. There’s really not much to do. There are two churches and the bank. There’s also a welding shop and a cafe. And the school. The school is where most of the activity is. There’s baseball and basketball of all sorts and volleyball.

Q: Have people been showing up in town out of curiosity?

A. There’s been some people dropping in at the bank wanting to know if there are T-shirts or brochures or something. We did have some postcards made up. We ordered about 100, and we thought that was plenty to go around, but we ran out. They sold like hot cakes. We’ve ordered 200 more. (The postcards cost 50 cents apiece.)

Q: Will you be prepared for the day when the country’s population migrates even farther to the south and west and Plato won’t be at the center of things anymore?

A. We understand that. I think the town east of us, Edgar Springs, had it for the past 10 years. It’s just our turn. We’ll accept it and then move on.

 

Plan to Breach Levee in Missouri Advances

“We’ve been told to go, but we’ve got two more cells of lightning that need to move through here before we start to pump,” Jim Lloyd, the corps’ operations team leader, said as he walked through the wind and rain late Sunday afternoon. “We’re going to work through the night to get this loaded.”

Mr. Lloyd, who had just left a briefing, emphasized that although Maj. Gen. Michael J. Walsh, who commands the Mississippi Valley Division of the corps, had ordered that the explosives be loaded, he had yet to give the final word to blast the levee.

“He’ll still have to make the decision,” Mr. Lloyd said, adding that although the explosives were extremely stable and would not be primed, the lightning was “going to complicate our lives something fierce.”

Earlier in the day, Missouri officials made a last-ditch effort to spare the levee when the state’s attorney general turned to the United States Supreme Court, asking it to overturn a day-old order from the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit that had allowed the corps to proceed with the operation. The state was later denied.

But even as the legal fight played out, General Walsh was directing the two barges stationed at a nearby staging area to prepare to move into the final position from which crews could begin injecting the levees with 265 tons of explosives to blast the earthen structure.

“It will be a heaving of soil — the levee will be excavated very rapidly,” said Nick Boone, a mechanical engineer who leads the corps’ blasting team. “On this upper end, it’s going to look like a waterfall. It’s an instant removal, and that’s the whole point — instant relief of the entire system.”

Blowing the levee will serve as a fiery coda to an agonizing round of deliberations that has played out here over the past several days, as General Walsh has weighed the interests of about 200 people living in the floodway against the safety of Cairo, Ill., a struggling town of around 3,000 people that lies on a winnowed slip of land between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. The move is expected to drop water levels upstream by roughly four feet.

General Walsh has toured the affected region over the past several days, meeting with residents and studying data provided by his team of experts. All the while, the surging rivers have continued to rise.

“?‘Project Flood’ is upon us,” he said in a statement on Sunday. “It is testing the system like never before.”

The problem is essentially one of drainage. With both rivers running high, they have backed up above the confluence, raising water levels upstream and causing major underseepage in Cairo, weakening the town’s defenses and prompting city officials there to call for a mandatory evacuation.

“It’s a no-brainer, the ground’s softening,” said Mayor Judson Childs of Cairo, who on Monday leaves office to be replaced by a new mayor. “This could change from minute to minute.”

On Sunday, Illinois state troopers went door to door rousting residents and patrolling the empty streets. A crew of inmates from the Tamms Correctional Center continued to fill sandbags at the north end of town, and emergency vehicles raced along Washington Avenue. Otherwise, the streets were largely empty as residents appeared to heed the evacuation order, fleeing town in a diminishing stream of cars.

Pulling his truck onto Washington Avenue, Harry Williams said he had evacuated last night but returned to get some medicine for his father-in-law and check on his property.

“I was worried about looters,” said Mr. Williams, who is staying with family north of town. “But it looks like they’re patrolling the town a lot better now.”

A few blocks down the road, Sebastian Thomas, lounging in a plastic lawn chair outside a self-service car wash, said the only thing that would make him evacuate was “about six feet of water.”

A. G. Sulzberger contributed reporting.

 

Jury Rejects Missouri Hospitals’ Case Against Tobacco Firms

About 40 Missouri hospitals sued the Philip Morris unit of the Altria Group, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the Lorillard Tobacco Company and other cigarette makers in 1998, claiming they manipulated the nicotine content in cigarettes and misrepresented the health effects of smoking. The hospitals were seeking more than $455 million in damages, ranging from about $300,000 for some hospitals to $86.4 million for the Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo.

The hospitals argued that the industry’s actions had raised spending for unreimbursed and uncompensated tobacco-related health care. The tobacco companies denied any responsibility for patient care costs at the hospitals or any financial losses by the hospitals. The jury, in Missouri Circuit Court in St. Louis, rejected the hospitals’ claims on a 9-3 vote Friday in the seventh day of deliberations.

“The jury correctly rejected the entirety of the hospital’s claims,” Murray Garnick, associate general counsel for Altria Client Services, said in a statement. The jury agreed with Philip Morris “that ordinary cigarettes are not negligently designed or defective,” he said.

The hospitals haven’t decided whether to appeal, their lawyer, Kenneth Brostron, said.

The case is the third such health care cost-recovery claim to reach trial, according to regulatory filings by Altria. The tobacco industry won the first, in Ohio, in 1999. The second initially resulted in a $17.8 million award for a health insurer by a New York jury in 2001. That was reversed on appeal in 2004.

The Missouri suit, which did not include patients as plaintiffs, went to trial in January.

The hospitals, which provide care to indigent patients and others who do not pay, represent the majority of licensed, adult acute care hospital beds in Missouri, according to the complaint. The hospitals said medical ethics required them to serve people in need regardless of their ability to pay.

Tobacco companies should reimburse the hospitals for care provided to patients who were unable to pay and were suffering from tobacco-related illness, the plaintiffs said. Hospitals also should “recover the increased costs incurred to providing all health care services” as a result of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke, according to the complaint.

 

Jury Rejects Missouri Hospitals’ Case Against Tobacco Firms

About 40 Missouri hospitals sued the Philip Morris unit of the Altria Group, the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, the Lorillard Tobacco Company and other cigarette makers in 1998, claiming they manipulated the nicotine content in cigarettes and misrepresented the health effects of smoking. The hospitals were seeking more than $455 million in damages, ranging from about $300,000 for some hospitals to $86.4 million for the Truman Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo.

The hospitals argued that the industry’s actions had raised spending for unreimbursed and uncompensated tobacco-related health care. The tobacco companies denied any responsibility for patient care costs at the hospitals or any financial losses by the hospitals. The jury, in Missouri Circuit Court in St. Louis, rejected the hospitals’ claims on a 9-3 vote Friday in the seventh day of deliberations.

“The jury correctly rejected the entirety of the hospital’s claims,” Murray Garnick, associate general counsel for Altria Client Services, said in a statement. The jury agreed with Philip Morris “that ordinary cigarettes are not negligently designed or defective,” he said.

The hospitals haven’t decided whether to appeal, their lawyer, Kenneth Brostron, said.

The case is the third such health care cost-recovery claim to reach trial, according to regulatory filings by Altria. The tobacco industry won the first, in Ohio, in 1999. The second initially resulted in a $17.8 million award for a health insurer by a New York jury in 2001. That was reversed on appeal in 2004.

The Missouri suit, which did not include patients as plaintiffs, went to trial in January.

The hospitals, which provide care to indigent patients and others who do not pay, represent the majority of licensed, adult acute care hospital beds in Missouri, according to the complaint. The hospitals said medical ethics required them to serve people in need regardless of their ability to pay.

Tobacco companies should reimburse the hospitals for care provided to patients who were unable to pay and were suffering from tobacco-related illness, the plaintiffs said. Hospitals also should “recover the increased costs incurred to providing all health care services” as a result of tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke, according to the complaint.