Yikes.

[rivka]

I lived in Iowa City for five years.

Follow that link. Large parts of Iowa City, and Cedar Rapids, and eastern Iowa in general, are now underwater. They're closing part of I-80, one of the country's major east-west interstates. The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports that, due to the flooding of Cedar Rapids, most of eastern Iowa is about to lose Internet service. There are mandatory evacuations of thousands and thousands of homes.

It's pretty horrifying to read about. The chapel where Michael and I were married is expected to be underwater soon. The university art museum. The main university library. All of these buildings are expected to be flooded by the weekend, and the Iowa River isn't even expected to crest until the middle of next week.

Here's how bad the flood is expected to be: "UI had been bracing all at-risk facilities based on a measurement equation of the 100-year flood level plus one foot. Officials have added an additional 18 inches to that equation, which is how much higher they expect the river level to reach." The hundred-year flood level, plus two and a half feet. That's a bad flood.

What strikes me most, reading the coverage in the Press-Citizen, is how orderly and well-planned the disaster response is. And all of it seems to be being organized at the local level. Iowa City was badly flooded in the midwest floods of 1993 - they've been there before, and it shows.

Take this, for example:

The Iowa City Animal Care and Adoption Center is transporting animals to the Johnson County 4-H Fairgrounds to prepare for potential flooding around the building at 111 Kirkwood Ave.

By Tuesday, 40 cats had been moved to a barn at the fairgrounds, 4261 Oak Crest Hill Road S.E., and two staff members moved among them Wednesday morning, cleaning cages and checking on the animals.

Also on Tuesday, loads of crates, food, housing and cleaning supplies were moved to the fairgrounds. Within the next few days, the rest of the animals, mostly dogs, will be moved, said Misha Goodman, director of the center. Some guinea pigs and cats have been placed in foster care. [...]

Eventually, the shelter probably will take up three buildings at the fairgrounds, one each for operations, cats and dogs. Goodman said staff will set up volunteer schedules and time for public visitation there. The center will stay open as long as possible.

"Our plan is to deal with facility animals prior to things getting out of hand with the public's animals," she said.

And this:

Though St. Luke’s and Mercy hospitals in Cedar Rapids have lost their electrical power and their steam supply, the most recent communication from those facilities is that they do not anticipate they will transfer patients here or to other health care centers.

The university believes that utilities to the [University of Iowa] hospitals and clinics can be maintained. The facility’s backup systems include:

-- Water: the tower along Hawkins Drive can meet the facility's needs for two days at full usage levels, more if rationing is instituted. There are also two access points to tie into the city’s water supply.

-- Electricity: backup generators have the capacity to meet essential power requirements.

-- Steam: A boiler was installed on the hospitals and clinics site for steam generation. Two portable steam-generating units are also being brought to the west side of campus to supply steam to facilities here, which would serve as a backup for UI Hospitals and Clinics.

-- Additional hospital supplies were ordered yesterday to ensure enough supplies are on hand.

My absolute favorite piece of soldiering-on is this:

Currently, the Main Library will remain open regular hours. Facilities engineers have placed the Main Library on this secondary evacuation list [i.e., the library is supposed to be evacuated by 5pm tomorrow]; however Libraries staff has already begun the process of relocating materials from the lower-level storage area to higher levels.

Is there going to be a Hurricane Katrina reprise?

No: As with earlier evacuations, public safety personnel will inform residents in a direct, door-to-door canvas. Transportation will be provided to those who require it. Those without housing options will be transported to the Red Cross Shelter at the Johnson County 4-H Fairgrounds. Emergency pet care is available, call 356-5295.

It's not that difficult. You deal with people individually, door-to-door. You provide them with transportation to a safe place. You set up an established, well-supplied Red Cross Shelter. You make provisions for people's animals. Remember Bush's wide-eyed protest, after Katrina, that "no one imagined the levees would burst?" Apparently people at ground level in a disaster like this have no similar shortage of imagination. They know. They know to expect a hundred-year flood, plus two and a half feet.

If I were still in grad school, we'd be sandbagging right now. Or setting up cots at the Johnson County Fairgrounds. Or loading up book carts in the library and taking them upstairs. Or something. There would be something we could do to help.

I lived in Iowa City for five years. Now it's underwater, and there's not the slightest hope of improvement any time soon.

Comments

[vom-marlowe.livejournal.com]

Early this morning, my library got an email from a UI academic librarian saying that they were moving books to higher levels and out of the basement. Removing books from lower shelves, sandbagging drains and such.

We also got an email from K-State saying that they were very sorry, but due to extensive tornado damage, they were closed and so couldn't do interlibrary loan. We got pictures of their campus and there are huge ancient trees laying across things and wild cars upside down.

And I had to just evacuate my library because of a tornado. This midwestern weather needs to *end*.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

That's terrible news, but I am glad to hear that there's an organized emergency response.

Still though.... :(

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Yikes, that's awful. I saw a headline earlier mentioning flooding in Iowa City and I was afraid it might be bad, but this is worse than I'd imagined.

[redbird23.livejournal.com]

I lived there for 10 years. It flooded the fall I moved into Mayflower for my freshman year (1990) and students/parents had to park up the road and cart belongings by hand to move in. I saw the aftermath of the 1993 floods (I was home for the summer during the worst of it). This appears to be much, much worse.

I am hoping the town survives, and not looking forward to my next visit.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder what life in Cedar Rapids will be like for Louie Brundidge after The New York Times reported he required payment to get in his boat and rescue a neighbor.

K.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

If my home was flooded right now, we'd lose everything with no hope of getting anything back. I keep thinking of that, of those folks who will have to start from scratch. It would take me years to just get back to this semi-comfortable level of working poverty. All while making payments on a home I probably couldn't be living in...

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I applaud the citizens of Iowa City for a well-thought out, unpanicked response. Flooding sucks, we had our bit last summer, and I feel with everybody in the path of water.

(This icon thing would work better if I could spell. Having two icons named 'food' and 'flood' was not a good idea after all...)

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

For the most part, the citizens seem to be doing well; the city, county, and state governments seem to be doing a great job as well. However, there are some individuals who just don't seem to be getting it; today's Press-Citizen tells the story of one guy who lives on Normandy Drive (right down by the bend of the Iowa River) who got upset with the path of the sandbag dike that emergency crews were building. It seems that because of the way the crews decided to build the dike, it was going to be placed so that his freestanding garage would be on the dry side, but his house would not be included in the protected area. He thinks this decision is going to cost him his house and the contents, which he assesses at "a half-million dollars", and he never saw the need to buy flood insurance. He wants somebody to take financial responsibility for his loss, and here's the worst part:

He blocked workers from being able to bring sandbags to the dike until a court order was obtained to force him to get out of their way. At that point, he finally decided it was time to start moving stuff out of his house. He lived two houses down the street during the 1993 flood, so he doesn't even have the excuse that he didn't know the area could flood.

What a tool.

[spiritdancer]

In Marion, here (and Qwest seems to have managed to get their POP back operational).

"UI had been bracing all at-risk facilities based on a measurement equation of the 100-year flood level plus one foot. Officials have added an additional 18 inches to that equation, which is how much higher they expect the river level to reach." The hundred-year flood level, plus two and a half feet. That's a bad flood.

Well, the mandatory evacuations in CR on Wednesday night were extended to the 500 year flood plain. Then expanded yesterday morning to 1 block beyond that. And last night, they just changed it to "1 block from wherever the water is," which seems to pretty reasonable to me.

As has been noted above, Mercy started moving patients out last night.

Most folks seem to be pretty smart about getting out.

Oh, and for some perspective: flood stage for the Cedar River at Cedar Rapids is 12 feet. The previous record (set back in 1920, IIRC) was between 19 and 20 feet. As of this morning, the water level was at nearly 31 feet, and still rising. (and it was interesting yesterday, because they lost the flood gauge in the morning, and apparently replaced it in the afternoon).

I suspect the good folks in Iowa City are watching CR and preparing for the worst and then some. (For those not familiar with the area, CR is on the Cedar River, Iowa City & Coralville are on the Iowa River - different rivers, but the same problem with Too Much Water).

[chiashurb.livejournal.com]

The US needs to fire FEMA and hire Iowa. We know our disasters. Fire, flood, tornado, you name it. 100-year flood plus 18 inches? Fuck that noise, we know how to deal with a 500-year flood if we need to! Why? We had one 15 years ago!

Seeing the flood pictures is gut-wrenching, but from everything I've seen and heard, we all learned a lot from 1993, 1996, and 1998. The rivers are behaving worse now than they did in 1993, but the people are better equipped to handle it, and the damage is not nearly as widespread (although that is cold comfort to the towns that have been completely submerged this time around).

[You don't know me, or at least I don't think you do. I found this post linked from a comment on thewronghands's journal. I grew up in Ames, and also lived in IC for five years. Now I'm in upstate New York and wishing I could be there to help secure the university]