Signs of cleanup and recovery from the Mississippi River flood can now be seen across Vicksburg, and on Tuesday flood-soaked insulation was being yanked and dirt levees were being lowered around homes and businesses.

Pete Hartley and his daughter, Kristen, donned painters’ masks to cut insulation from below their Hartley Road home as they waited on word from their insurance provider.

Earthen barriers erected in the weeks before the river’s historic crest May 19 were either spread or slowly taken down.

A small grass fire on the Yazoo Backwater Levee near U.S. 61 North Tuesday afternoon was quickly extinguished. Warren County Volunteer Fire Coordinator Kelly Worthy said the fire likely began after a cigarette butt was thrown from a passing vehicle. The levee system was not damaged, Worthy said.

The river dropped about six-tenths of a foot overnight, to 48.3 feet. Its crest at 57.1 feet on May 19 was the highest in Vicksburg since 1927, and it is expected to remain above the 43-foot flood stage until June 15, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. Forecasts by the National Weather Service extend the possibility to June 19.

“It’ll be somewhere between the 15th and the 19th,” said Marty Pope, senior service hydrologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson.

The river was 39 feet this morning at Arkansas City and is forecast to drop below the 37-foot flood stage on Sunday.

Updated forecasts for Greenville and Natchez show dips below a 48-foot flood stage at each city by June 18 and June 24, respectively.

In Warren County, 1,340 structures have been evacuated, 707 of them primary dwellings.

More than 3,200 people have been displaced.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has OK’d more than $1.3 million in individual disaster assistance in 14 Mississippi counties.

Individual assistance payouts total $4.2 million in those counties, with $682,141.12 in Warren County through Tuesday, FEMA has said.

More than $2.4 million has been paid out in Tunica County.