In recent history, the most devastating Missouri River flood was the Great Flood of 1993. At Jefferson City, the river crested more than 15 feet above flood stage after late spring and early summer rains across the Midwest reached two to four times average levels and saturated the land. The flood claimed 52 lives, including 27 in Missouri, caused $15 billion in destruction from Minnesota to Missouri, and damaged fifteen thousand Missouri homes. During a 7-inch rainstorm on July 7, 1993, the levee between the river and this spot was first breached, and on July 15 the water covered U.S. Highway 63. After the river receded for a week, heavy rains returned, and on July 28 U.S. Highway 54 was closed temporarily when a 20,000-gallon propane tank broke from its mooring and began to leak. Although the tank drifted away from danger and the highway reopened later that day, floodwaters reached the highway the next day, effectively isolating Jefferson City from this side of the river. For a time, the only crossing between St. Louis and Kansas City was the bridge on Interstate 70 west of Columbia, forcing excessively long commutes. The high water mark came on July 30, and Jefferson City remained above flood stage for seven straight weeks, from July 2 to Aug. 19, with a flood peak of 38.6 feet that easily topped the 1951 record of 34.2 feet. Before 1993, the largest known Missouri River flood was probably in 1844, when exceptionally heavy rainfall along the lower Missouri filled the floodplain from bluff to bluff, destroyed bottomland corn, and left driftwood and debris cemented into fields by mud. This place also flooded in 1995 and 2013, and the Missouri River, stretching 2,340 miles across the Midwest, Great Plains, and northern Rocky Mountains, drains 10 states and two Canadian provinces through major tributaries such as the Kansas, Platte, and Yellowstone, making future floods inevitable.