News from The Bear Cave is slowly spilling out into cyberspace. Here is what I know as of today. The massive volunteer work here in CF has saved the downtown area. This involves the waste water treatment plant and everything south of the river. The North Cedar area of town was completely washed out. Everyone there was flooded. The Brown bottle, North Cedar School, and Black Hawk Park were out there in that area. Also all those people who lived in trailer homes around the Black Hawk Rollerdrome are under water.Emily and I spent a few hours Tuesday night sand bagging the top of the levee in CF. I went back by myself Wednesday morning and sandbagged again for another few hours. My arms are like Jello. Sand bags are the heaviest thing in the world. I guess that's the point right? It would be insane to fill bags with helium balloons. The sand bagging efforts paid off this time. The levee was not breached and the water is dropping. However, we received another few inches today. The water today should not raise the water too high, so we might miss the blunt of it again.
The image today is brought to by the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier photo by Morgan Hawthorn. This is a picture of the railroad bridge in Wloo that was taken down by the mad water. The east side of downtown Wloo did not get flooded, but the west side did. The public library, courier, and the Five Sullivan Brother's Convention Center are on the flooded side. I saw an aerial photo of the Wloo Buck's Stadium and it was all water with walls making an outline of the outfield.
We had every bridge in town closed except for the San Succi bridge near my old neighborhood. Highway 58, 218, and 63 were all closed. I don't know if they are open yet or not. Although things are getting better here, we are not out of the woods yet. We are completely saturate and if we continue to get these storms every day or two then we could be right back in Mother Nature path of destruction. I want to thank all of you who have been thinking about us. Our prayers and thoughts need to now be focused on Cedar Rapids. The river there is going to crest at 32 feet tomorrow or Saturday. Once again flood stage starts at 12 feet. That town is completely under water now. Seriously, they are evacuating about 10,000+ people. They have a 500 year flood plan (which is a worse case scenario), but they have exceeded that area and the water is still rising. In 1993 the water was about 19 feet high. It is currently at 29 feet. The only bridge in that town that is not UNDER water is the I-380 bridge. Quaker Oats is closed indefinitely. I don't know what a bushel of soy beans normally go for but last night on the news they said that they can go for over $9 a bushel. This due to the insane number of farm fields wiped out by the floods. Expect higher food costs in the future. Tomorrow the State is closing part I-80, the heart line to the State of Iowa. Chuck Culvier, our governor, has declared 83 out of 99 counties in Iowa as disaster areas.
If you have questions I can try to entertain those via comments. Stay dry my friends!
8 comments:
wow - really tragic - I am glad you are OK, but feel for the people that have lost so much.
I heard that the sandbags in Cedar Rapids actually fell in and created a damm - any truth to that?
sandbagging efforts did fail in Cedar Rapids. There were also many levee failures. Downtown is actually under several feet of water. There are businesses that you can't see the main level of because they are that far under water.
Ron Steel from KWWL had to appologize on tv because he made a Katrina reference and some people took offense to that and said this was nothing like Katrina. I beg to differ. This is right up there, but on a smaller scale. Unlike Katrina, there has been NO loss of life. They say flooding kills more people than any other natural disaster.
Thousands of homes and businesses are under water. "Thousands with out power for weeks to come," says a rep from Alliant Energy.
A national correspondent said the river in Cedar Rapids was to crest at 24 feet, but that was not correct. Like I said in this post, it is to be at 32 feet.
The unintentional dam(n)ing took place in Cedar Rapids, per local media reports.
When sandbags make a dam in the river that means that the river has to rise up above them making things possibly worse.
Watching all the horror unfold with unbelieving eyes up here in Mpls. Hang in there, guys.
Good job pitching in on the sandbagging...though CF Bear and sandbagging are old friends.
zing!
You are beautiful my friend.
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