The runaway river claimed its latest Missouri town late Wednesday night when it broke a levee in Winfield, just outside of St. Louis, leaving a 150-foot hole, deluging the small community and sending a surge of water downstream toward the next levee. Crews of firefighters spent the night evacuating residents, in some cases by boat, as workers fought to contain the river further south.

With weather forecasters calling for as many as two inches of rain in some parts of Missouri on Thursday, crews of emergency responders, sandbags in hand, were preparing for the worst.

St. Louis is the next major city in the path of the surging river, which is expected to crest at 40 feet there on Saturday. Because the river widens at St. Louis and connects with several tributaries, damage there is expected to be minimal. Still, the threat was great enough to prompt the city to relocate its annual Independence Day fair and festival for the first time. Concerns were also raised about levees on the opposite side of the river in East St. Louis, Ill.

President Bush began a tour of the region today in Cedar Rapids, where the waters have receded but 25,000 people have been left homeless. He met with Chet Culver, the governor of Iowa; Kay Halloran, the mayor of Cedar Rapids; and emergency management officials at a local emergency center, located at Kirkwood Community College, before a planned helicopter tour of flood-stricken areas.

Mr. Bush said he had come to listen. “Obviously, to the extent we can help immediately, we want to help,” he said, adding that he particularly wanted people in small towns to know that they were not forgotten.

“The good news is the people of Iowa are tough-minded people,” he said. “You’ll come back better. Sometimes it’s hard to see it.”

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