Craig Travers is the General Manager and Midwest Vice President for Affinity Gaming, the new company that came out of bankruptcy and now owns St Joe Frontier Casino.

Travers is a proven commodity in casino disaster management, having managed a St Louis riverboat gambling house during the 1993, 1994 and 1995 floods there.

He told reporters water actually flooded the gambling house twice.

Travers says Missouri River flooding has caused between three and four million dollars damage. The casino is losing about $45,000 each day it is closed. The company continues to pay most of its employees. Many of them are working with the private contractor managing the cleanup, repairs and renovations at the casino.

The total insurance tab is expected to rise to near $11 million.

They hope to reopen the casino by October 1.

The casino is still surrounded by water. The team is busy building a road through the floodwaters to allow them to haul away between 20 and 25 tons of debris.

One lucky fellow landed what some would consider the best job of the bunch in the hundred degree heat: wading into the floodwater, often chest deep, to give directions to drivers as they backed up their huge dump trucks into the water to dump the paving material.

Travers invited the media on a tour of the casino was the recovery continued. He was asked about that guy in the water and that $11 million figure.