The historic severity of the 1993 flood, which killed 50 people, swept over more than 8 million acres of land and left more than 65,000 people homeless, forced federal officials to seek new ways to prevent a repeat of that summer’s disaster.

Saddled with $10 billion in flood damage, the Clinton administration and Congress responded with a passel of untested programs aimed at reducing the ranks of future victims by trying to move residents out of harm’s way. The government also sought to buy vast tracts of farmland to create a natural wetlands buffer that could absorb the brunt of future floods.

The aggressive campaign to clear people from the lowlands appears to be paying off.

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Along the river banks of Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska, as many as 45 percent of the bottom-land houses damaged in the 1993 flood have been bought by a consortium of federal, state and local agencies.

That estimate is likely to hold true throughout the Midwestern flood plains, said Francis P. Begley, a deputy director for the Federal Emergency Management Agency regional office in Kansas City, Mo.

Since 1993, the federal government has bought more than 12,000 flood-prone dwellings, paying $375 million to scatter at least 25,000 people from the flatlands.

While thousands more residents remain in the bottoms, officials say the exodus has drastically reduced the need for government disaster aida savings already realized during this summer’s season of high water.