When recent heavy rains swelled a private Mississippi lake and began eroding its earthen dam, Yazoo County Emergency Management Director Jack Willingham was scrambling for a plan.

He had no contact information for any of the homeowners who might need to evacuate, so he drove to the scene and began knocking on doors.

“I was just fortunate that this was a small area and I was able to do it on my own, door-to-door, grunt work,” Willingham said.

The dam just north of the state capital of Jackson — known as MS04462 in a state database — had no official hazard rating, no record of state inspections and no formal emergency action plan mapping out the expected flood zone, whom to contact and whom to evacuate were it to fail. It's one of more than 1,000 dams in Mississippi that remain unclassified because of a backlog of work for state regulators.

An Associated Press review also found hundreds of other dams lacking official emergency plans that are located dangerously close to homes in Southeastern states that have been swamped by heavy rains and severe flooding in recent weeks. The AP focused on high-hazard dams — a rating determined by federal or state regulators that means the loss of human life is likely if a dam fails.

The AP review identified 578 high-hazard dams regulated by state or federal agencies that lacked emergency action plans in North Carolina as of summer 2018. It found 259 such dams in Georgia, 111 in Mississippi and 101 in South Carolina. Though the specific numbers may have changed since then (Mississippi now has 106 high-hazard dams without emergency plans), the general problem has not.

“It’s important that every dam, and especially those that are considered high-hazard potential, have an emergency action plan," said Mark Ogden, a former Ohio dam safety official who now is a technical specialist with the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

Emergency action plans can be useful for local government officials, emergency personnel responding to a disaster and people who live in valleys downstream from dams.

The emergency plan for Mississippi's Oktibbeha County Lake Dam, which partially collapsed in a mudslide last month, lists the addresses and names of more than 100 property owners in the Starkville area who could be subject to evacuation if the dam fails. The plan includes color maps showing the potential inundation area and lists roads that would need to be closed. It also describes specific steps to be taken depending on the type of problem at the dam, with the phone numbers of various local and state emergency personnel who should be notified.

Mississippi requires emergency action plans for all high-hazard dams, as well as for some with significant hazard ratings, which apply to dams whose failure could damage multiple roads or public utilities but are unlikely to kill people.

The Yazoo County dam that developed problems during the recent rain storms had not received a hazard rating because of a backlog at the state regulatory agency. It was one of several thousand previously unregulated dams that came to the attention of the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality during a 2016 survey of aerial images and geographic information system data, said William McKercher, chief of the Dam Safety Division.

The survey doubled the dams in the state's inventory from about 3,400 to 6,800, he said. Several years later, his office is still working to establish hazard levels for each dam, which would determine whether formal emergency plans and regular inspections are required.

Emergency action plans are mandated for all high-hazard dams by 43 states and Puerto Rico, according to a survey by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The exceptions include Alabama, the only state without a dam regulatory office, along with Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Vermont and Wyoming.

Even in states that require emergency plans, the AP review shows some dams still lack them. That's because many dams are privately owned, and state agencies have limited powers to force owners to hire professionals to develop the plans, which can cost thousands of dollars.

“Funding is probably the biggest issue," said Ogden, of the dam safety association. "Given the size of the dam and complexity of what could be inundated downstream, it can require significant investment in engineering to do the modeling to determine what areas would be impacted.”

In Georgia, state officials updated rules for emergency action plans in 2016 to make it clear that dam owners had to complete them, said Tom Woosley, manager of the state’s Safe Dams Program. Since then, the number of high-hazard dams with emergency plans has steadily risen, although some private dam owners still aren't complying.

Dam owners who shirk requirements to develop emergency plans could face fines in Georgia, but Woosley said he can't recall that actually happening.

In many cases, “the dam doesn’t generate money, so any money going towards a fine is money going away from fixing a dam,” Woosley said.

North Carolina in 2014 began requiring all dams designated as high- or intermediate-hazard to have emergency action plans. Since January 2019, the state has received 183 new emergency plans from dam owners. But 543 of the 1,272 high-hazard dams under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Environmental Quality still lack emergency plans, as do 181 of the 247 intermediate hazard dams, department spokesman Rob Johnson said.

The department “is committed to bringing all dams into compliance with the law,” he said. But he said the “dam safety program is under-staffed and under-resourced," with nearly 18 full-time employees to keep track of nearly 6,000 dams in the state.

That's still significantly more staff than is available in Mississippi. The dam safety program there is authorized to have seven people but currently has just three because of vacancies, McKercher said. The office is redirecting some of the unused money for staff salaries to hire contractors to complete emergency action plans for dams in defunct or underfunded watershed districts, he said.

Had the dam in Yazoo County's Springridge Place subdivision been previously inspected, officials might have noticed the clogged spillway pipes that caused water to flow over the top of the dam on Feb. 11 and wash away part of its embankment. And had an emergency action plan existed for the dam, it could have saved considerable stress for local emergency officials.

“If we had a plan in place that said hey, here’s the problem, here’s the numbers we need to call, we can go step-by-step and I could have done it without even being out there,” Willingham said.

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Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and Thanawala reported from Atlanta. Minkoff, a member of AP's data team, reported from Washington, D.C.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — From the opening bell, Democrats savaged New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised pointed questions about Bernie Sanders' take-no-prisoners politics during a contentious debate Wednesday night that threatened to further muddy the party's urgent quest to defeat President Donald Trump.

Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who was once a Republican, was forced to defend his record and past comments related to race, gender and his personal wealth in an occasionally rocky debate stage debut. Sanders, meanwhile, tried to beat back pointed questions about his embrace of democratic socialism and his health following a heart attack last year.

The ninth debate of this cycle featured the most aggressive sustained period of infighting in the Democrats’ yearlong search for a presidential nominee. The tension reflected growing anxiety among candidates and party leaders that the nomination fight could yield a candidate who will struggle to build a winning coalition in November to beat Trump.

The campaign is about to quickly intensify. Nevada votes on Saturday and South Carolina follows on February 29. More than a dozen states host Super Tuesday contests in less than two weeks with about one-third of the delegates needed to win the nomination at stake.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was in a fight for survival and stood out with repeated attacks on Bloomberg. She sought to undermine him with core Democratic voters who are uncomfortable with his vast wealth, his offensive remarks about policing of minorities and demeaning comments about women, including those who worked at his company.

Warren labeled Bloomberg "a billionaire who calls people fat broads and horse-faced lesbians."

She wasn’t alone.

Sanders lashed out at Bloomberg's policing policies as New York City mayor that he said targeted “African-American and Latinos in an outrageous way."

And former Vice President Joe Biden charged that Bloomberg’s “stop-and-frisk” policy ended up “throwing 5 million black men up against the wall.”

Watching from afar, Trump joined the Bloomberg pile on.

“I hear he's getting pounded tonight, you know he's in a debate,” Trump said at a rally in Phoenix.

After the debate, Warren told reporters: "I have no doubt that Michael Bloomberg is reaching in his pocket right now, and spending another hundred million dollars to try to erase every American's memory about what happened on the debate stage."

On a night that threatened to tarnish the shine of his carefully constructed TV-ad image, Bloomberg faltered when attacked on issues related to race and gender. But he was firm and unapologetic about his wealth and how he has used it to effect change important to Democrats. He took particular aim at Sanders and his self-description as a democratic socialist.

“I don’t think there's any chance of the senator beating Donald Trump," Bloomberg declared before noting Sanders' rising wealth. "The best known socialist in the country happens to be a millionaire with three houses!"

Sanders defended owning multiple houses, noting he has one in Washington, where he works, and two in Vermont, the state he represents in the Senate.

While Bloomberg was the shiny new object Wednesday, the debate also marked a major test for Sanders, who is emerging as the front-runner in the Democrats’ nomination fight, whether his party’s establishment likes it or not. A growing group of donors, elected officials and political operatives fear that Sanders’ uncompromising progressive politics could be a disaster in the general election against Trump, yet they’ve struggled to coalesce behind a single moderate alternative.

Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, went after both Bloomberg and Sanders, warning that one threatened to “burn down” the Democratic Party and the other was trying to buy it.

He called them “the two most polarizing figures on this stage," with little chance of defeating Trump or helping congressional Democrats in contests with Republicans.

Bloomberg and Sanders were prime targets, but the stakes were no less dire for the other four candidates on stage.

Longtime establishment favorite Biden, a two-term vice president, desperately needed to breathe new life into his flailing campaign, which entered the night at the bottom of a moderate muddle behind Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. And after a bad finish last week in New Hampshire, Warren was fighting to resurrect her stalled White House bid.

A Warren campaign aide said on Twitter that her fiery first hour of debate was her best hour of fundraising "to date."

The other leading progressive in the race, Sanders came under attack from Biden and Bloomberg for his embrace of democratic socialism.

Sanders, as he has repeatedly over the last year, defended the cost of his signature “Medicare for All” healthcare plan, which would eliminate the private insurance industry in favor of a government-backed healthcare system that would cover all Americans.

"When you asked Bernie how much it cost last time he said...'We'll find out,’” Biden quipped. “It costs over $35 trillion, let's get real."

And ongoing animosity flared between Buttigieg and Klobuchar when the former Indiana mayor slammed the three-term Minnesota senator for failing to answer questions in a recent interview about Mexican policy and forgetting the name of the Mexican president.

Buttigieg noted that she's on a committee that oversees trade issues in Mexico and she “was not able to speak to literally the first thing about the politics of the country.”

She shot back: "Are you trying to say I'm dumb? Are you mocking me here?"

Later in the night she lashed out at Buttigieg again: “I wish everyone else was as perfect as you, Pete.”

The debate closed with a question about the possibility that Democrats remain divided deep into the primary season with a final resolution coming during a contested national convention in July.

Asked if the candidate with the most delegates should be the nominee -- even if he or she is short of a delegate majority, almost every candidate suggested that the convention process should "work its way out," as Biden put it.

Sanders, who helped force changes to the nomination process this year and hopes to take a significant delegate lead in the coming weeks, was the only exception.

“The person who has the most votes should become the nominee,” he said.

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Peoples and Jaffe reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento, California, contributed to this report.

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Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”