Eagle Lake’s 800 residents were being told to get out today by Warren County deputies going door-to-door warning that evacuations were necessary because access to the community north of Vicksburg was being cut off.

“With this revised forecast, even lacking an official evacuation order from the Board of Supervisors, we started telling people yesterday that for their own safety, they needed to leave,” Sheriff Martin Pace said this morning.

“In the event of an overtopping or breach of the backwater levee, I would not have the boat resources to evacuate the people out of Eagle Lake,” he said.

Pace said deputies will remain on patrol at the lake throughout the high water.

A special meeting of Warren County supervisors to “issue points of interest” and consider an evacuation order was called late Tuesday and is set for 8 a.m. Thursday, Board President Richard George said this morning.

“It’s probably some good advice,” George said of deputies’ evacuating lake residents.

With the river climbing about a foot a day over the past week, officials Tuesday closed Mississippi 465, the main paved access to Eagle Lake, and planned to close the second-most used route to the lake, the Yazoo Backwater Levee, on Thursday. Equipment at the Eagle Lake Volunteer Fire Department will be moved out starting today, starting with the two oldest of the department’s four trucks, Chief Bill Parker said.

“It’ll be a few more days,” Parker said. “We’re holding out as long as we can.”

The Mississippi River Mainline Levee at Eagle Lake was to be closed to the public, except residents and emergency vehicles, by Saturday.

North-south rail traffic in Vicksburg was to end today as City of Vicksburg workers installed steel beams near City Front to build a wall to hold back rising water there. The suspension of rail traffic also was required because water was quickly approaching tracks at North Washington Street and the Port of Vicksburg.

South of the city, LeTourneau Road, the only land access to LeTourneau Technologies, was to be closed to vehicular traffic Thursday. Workers there are expected to be boated in from near U.S. 61 South.

The Mississippi River stood at 47 feet this morning, up nearly eight-tenths of a foot from Tuesday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the National Weather Service moved back to May 20 the predicted date for the crest of 57.5 feet at Vicksburg, surpassing the benchmark 1927 flood recorded at 56.2 feet. Flood stage at Vicksburg is 43 feet.

Effects of the levee blast at Birds Point, Mo., on Monday caused the later crest date, said Marty Pope, senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson. The levee was burst by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to protect Cairo, Ill., from massive flooding. Stages in Cairo, where the Mississippi and Ohio rivers meet, are at 59.8 feet and near crest this morning, nearly 20 feet above flood stage.

Rain chances are low in southern Arkansas through the Ohio River Valley until next Wednesday, Pope said. Heavy rains there over the weekend spiked the crest forecast to its current level, Pope has said.

“Water’s going to start inundating the South Delta at 56.2 feet,” said Peter Nimrod, engineer for the Board of Mississippi Levee Commissioners, who expects water to overtop the 28-mile earthen protection for the Yazoo Backwater Area and make scouring from below more likely. “Lots of structures go underground.”

Because the water is forecast to rise higher than ever recorded, officials don’t know if U.S. 61 will go under, where the water might top the north-south route or how long it would stay there.

“Each flood is different,” said Mississippi Department of Transportation Central District Commissioner Dick Hall. “There’s no way to tell what is and what isn’t.”

High water could enter Redwood Elementary School or cut access to the school at U.S. 61 and Redwood Road, meaning students would be forced to finish out the school year — three weeks remain — at other elementaries in the Vicksburg Warren School District.

The north-south rail suspension was expected to last three to four weeks, its operator told customers Tuesday. About 21 miles of track from Redwood to south Vicksburg is leased by Kansas-based Watco Companies.

“We don’t want to be out of service a day later than we have to,” said Ed McKechnie, executive vice president and chief commercial officer for the short-line operator. “When the water recedes, we’ll check the ballast and rocks that hold it in place, reinspect ties to check for any damage and come back at restricted speeds below 10 miles per hour at first.”

The rail operator is a prime shipping highway for industries including International Paper’s Vicksburg Mill and facilities at the port.

The businesses along the port and IP were to meet in Vicksburg today, and the Corps of Engineers had called a meeting in Rolling Fork to address flooding scenarios there.

IP will rely on the road rather than the rail for shipments to and from the Redwood mill, said Helen Hawkins, communications manager for the mill and for the firm’s Prattville, Ala., facility.

“While we do not anticipate an impact to production, we do anticipate the potential to be without rail service for four to six weeks,” Hawkins said, adding trucks will become the main mode of transportation. “This will ensure suppliers can access the mill, and that customers receive their orders.”

LeTourneau Technologies will complete reductions in its labor force by Thursday and will employ a skeleton crew that will be boated in to maintain the physical plant for as long as the water is high, said plant manager Bo-D Massey. The yard’s main access road will be barricaded near its intersection with Glass Road, Warren County Road Manager Richard Winans said. In the 2008 flood, the plant shut down for two months and a mile-long segment of the eastbound lane washed out.

On Tuesday, Gov. Haley Barbour asked President Barack Obama to declare Warren County a disaster area and for aid for local governments and individuals, along with 10 other counties — Adams, Bolivar, Claiborne, Coahoma, Desoto, Issaquena, Jefferson, Tunica, Washington and Wilkinson. More could be added as appropriate, the governor’s office said.

All recreational boating was suspended until further notice Tuesday on lakes along the river affected by the flood.

Gates are open on the Muddy Bayou Control Structure, filling Eagle Lake to 90 feet from its ideal level of 76.9 feet and relieving pressure on the Buck Chute levee while a berm to enclose sand boils is built below. The lake’s stage was 81.3 feet this morning, up 1.3 feet.