The levee break left Highway 34 at Gulfport, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, under water, prompting officials to close a bridge to the neighboring town of Burlington and creating havoc for commuters.

More than 1,000 Illinois National Guard troops were working alongside hundreds of inmates from the state's prisons to shore up levees throughout the state, a spokeswoman with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency told CNN.

The New York Times said people in dozens of Mississippi towns facing flooding were working Tuesday to shore up about 30 levees.

"We were very, very disappointed that this levee broke today," said emergency official Patti Thompson, adding the imposing Mississippi "is a very powerful river and it can be hard to harness" even in drier times, let alone during record flooding.

Officials had anticipated that the levees could be a weak point and had sought to shore them up with sand bags, she said.

President George W. Bush vowed Tuesday to help flood-ravaged states get back on their feet.

"I fully understand people are upset when they lose their home. A person's home is their most valued possession," Bush said.

"We want to work with state and local folks to have a clear strategy to help people find -- get back into a place that -- where they can live," he said, adding that housing and fresh water were the top priorities.

Bush, who was sharply criticized for the administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, was to visit Iowa Thursday with a federal disaster response team.

"Unfortunately I've been to too many disasters as president," he said.

More than 11 million people in nine midwestern states have been affected by the flooding and extreme weather of recent weeks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said.

Iowa was by the far the hardest hit: 83 of the state's 99 counties have been declared disaster areas, and more than 4.8 million sandbags have been laid down to try to stem the tide.

Many Iowans who had scrambled to try to contain damage as flooding ravaged dozens of Midwest towns over the weekend were left with little option but to evacuate Tuesday with the Mississippi yet to hit its high point.

The massive river, which passes through 10 states in its 3,734-kilometer (2,320-mile) journey from its source in Minnesota to its mouth in the Gulf of Mexico, is engorged by water from the Iowa and Cedar Rivers.

"It will take us a week before we can even assess what the cleanup is going to be," said Columbus Junction Mayor Dan Wilson.

"It will be days before we can get to the point that we can start pumping the water out. Right now, we just have to live with it."

No one yet knows how many small communities have been swamped, but there are dozens on the back roads of Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa.

Authorities fear the potential health impact of unclean water supplies, and that widespread crop damage will help worsen already high food prices.

In Oakville, Iowa, 36-year-old farmer Ron Lanz was forced to abandon his farm and 800 hogs after the Iowa River levee broke on Saturday.

"It's devastating to leave those hogs behind," Lanz said. "I don't like to think about it."

Meanwhile the American Red Cross said a series of weather-related calamities had left it low on cash and struggling to provide aid to disaster victims.

"Our disaster relief fund is empty, but there's a lot of need out there and the Red Cross is responding," spokeswoman Suzy De Francis told AFP.

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