DELTA — Edna Tarver has seen floods aplenty in her 40 years in the tiny village of Delta.

“I lived down the road in 1973,” Tarver said. “We were all very scared and had us a boat that we tied to the porch. It got up to the edge of the house.

The mainline levee behind her house has been raised since, and she’s sure it’ll protect her even with a record stage predicted.

“I’m believing it’s not going to get that high here,” Tarver said.

Gov. Bobby Jindal has activated 150 Louisiana National Guard troops and requested that President Barack Obama declare a state of emergency so assistance will be ready. Fourteen parishes have declared emergencies. Levees are being sandbagged to address troublesome sand boils.

Northeast Louisiana’s flood fight this week has involved protecting several vital buildings in Vidalia, on the river side of the mainline levee, including the Concordia Parish city’s convention center, a hospital and a nursing home. Residents evacuated even as miles of lined sand bins were placed to shield the unprotected side of the city’s riverfront property. The river at Vidalia, just across the Mississippi state line from Natchez, is set to crest at 65 feet by May 22.

Farther north, just across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg in Madison and Tensas parishes, the mood among engineers and levee officials is calmer.

“This levee is in as good a shape as it can be,” said Tommy Hengst, a flood control official with the Vicksburg District of the Corps of Engineers, during a strategy meeting of the Fifth Louisiana Levee District in Tallulah. “The levee in 1927 pales in comparison to what’s there now.”

Sand boils seeping up from the river have been kept to a minimum in Madison and Tensas. One, west of Davis Landing near Yucatan Lake in Tensas, required bagging during the week and will take three to four days to plug, said Reynold Minsky, levee district president. The lake is on the unprotected side of the mainline river levee system.

“It’s nothing we can’t handle,” Minsky said.

Lake Bruin, which is inside the levee system, may rise “a foot to a foot and a half” at best but shouldn’t feel too much of the flood’s effects, said Jane Netterville, a Tensas Parish Police Jury member and resident of the resort community.

“This time, there’s no water in the Tensas River or the Ouachita,” Netterville said. “But, we’ve always been ready when it’s an extended battle.”

Jindal said this week he expects the Corps to open the Bonnet Carre’ spillway in St. Charles Parish to alleviate stress on levees downriver. No decision has been made concerning the Morganza spillway, near Pointe Coupee Parish and Wilkinson County, Miss., which has been opened only once, in 1973.