Water, Water, Everywhere In Iowa

As Evacuations Continue, Communities Struggle With The Irony Of Drinking Water Shortages

(CBS/ AP)  Rising water from the Cedar River forced the evacuation of a downtown hospital Friday after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 400 city blocks were under water.

Cedar Rapids was the hardest-hit city in Iowa, where Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties as state disaster areas and nine rivers were at or above historic flood levels. Elsewhere in the upper Midwest, rivers and streams tipping their banks forced evacuations, closed roads, and even threatened drinking water.

Mercy Medical Center's 176 patients, including about 30 patients in a nursing home facility at the hospital, were being evacuated to other hospitals in the region. The evacuation started late Thursday night and continued Friday morning in the city of 124,000 residents.

"Some are frail and so it's a very delicate process with them," said Karen Vander Sanden, a hospital spokeswoman.

A local Iowa paper reported that the evacuation took seven hours to complete and finished up around 8:20 Friday morning.

"We're all done," Keith Rippy, area ambulance director told The Gazette.

Water was seeping into the hospital's lower levels, where the emergency generator is located, said Dustin Hinrichs of the Linn County emergency operations center.

"They proactively and preventatively started evacuation basically guessing on the fact they were going to lose power," he said.

In an effort to see the silver lining of the situation, Vander Sanden told The Gazette, “It’s a unique opportunity. We can clean and paint and strip floors. We’re trying to take advantage of this rather than let an opportunity pass.”

Dave Koch, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids fire department, said the river will crest Friday at about 31.8 feet. It was at 30.9 feet early in the morning. In a 1993 flood, considered the worst flood in recent history, it was at 19.27 feet.

At least 438 city blocks in downtown were under water, Koch said. There was more flooding outside of downtown, but authorities don't know what widespread it is.

Flooding also closed Interstate 80 from east of Iowa City to Davenport. The flooded Cedar River crosses the interstate in Cedar County, about 20 miles east of Iowa City.

No deaths or serious injuries were reported in Iowa, but one man was killed in southern Minnesota after his car plunged from a washed-out road into floodwaters. Another person was rescued from a nearby vehicle in the town of Albert Lea.

Just southeast of Grand Rapids, Mich., crews pulled the body of a motorist from a car found drifting in the swollen Thornapple River. State police said they believe the 57-year-old man called on his cell phone but didn't say what happened or where he was; they found him using global positioning equipment.

Violent thunderstorms Thursday and Friday brought widespread flooding to Michigan's Lower Peninsula that authorities say left some roads and bridges unstable or impassable. Utilities said about 28,000 new power outages were reported Friday morning, in addition to about 36,000 customers who lost power in earlier storms.

In Wisconsin, amphibious vehicles that carry tourists on the Wisconsin River were used to evacuate homes and businesses in Baraboo, north of Madison. Hundreds of people lost power in Avoca, west of Madison, and were "strongly encouraged" to evacuate because of flooding of the Wisconsin River and other streams, said Chief Deputy Jon Pepper of the Iowa County Sheriff's Department.

The rising Fond du Lac River forced hundreds from homes in Fond du Lac.

People in several northern Missouri communities, meanwhile, were piling up sandbags to prepare for flooding in the Missouri River, expected to crest over the weekend, and a more significant rise in the Mississippi River expected Wednesday.

Amtrak's California Zephyr line was suspended across Iowa because of flooding along the BNSF Railway.

Despite all the water in the town, there was precious little for toilets, cleaning, or drinking.

Koch said the city is at critical levels and only one well was operating. It was in a flood area protected by sandbags, and generators were pumping water away. Normally, the city has six or more functioning wells, he said.

"If we lost that one, we would be in serious trouble. Basically we are using more water than we are producing," he said. "We really need to reduce the amount of water we are using ... even using paper plates, hand sanitizer."

Area hotels issued water warnings, including the Marriott Hotel, which issued a statement imploring guests to cut their usage and use water only for drinking.

"Any flushing of the toilet, running the sink, or showering should be kept to a minimum. We understand this is asking a lot, but anyway you may be able to assist us in this time of crisis would go a long way to avoid an even greater disaster."

Other Midwestern cities faced similar shortages: Lawrenceville, Ill., a town of 4,600 people near the Indiana line, grappled for a second day Thursday with a broken water system that left businesses with no usable tap water, forcing them to close.

In Des Moines, about 300 volunteers and members of the Iowa Army National Guard worked late Thursday into Friday to shore up a levee showing some soft spots north of downtown. The levee protects a neighborhood along the rising Des Moines River.

They shored up the levee with about 60,000 sandbags, and the levee was holding, said A.J. Mumm, spokesman for the Polk County Emergency Management Agency.

There are about 200 homes in the neighborhood, which is under a voluntary evacuation.

[l8c6]

Lazy , lazy lib''''s

Posted by bretster7

yeah, and right wing republicans are the only ones who pay taxes. I agree. There shouldn''t be any federal aid to the state of Iowa. Let them help each other out in their community--agreed !

[l8c6]

Barbara Bush: What I%u2019m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. So many of the people in the arena here were underprivileged, anyway, so this is working very well for them. Then I%u2019ve heard unbelievable stories of a mother with twins that were two weeks old on the bridge for four days. Unbelievable. But they lived.


Ya''ll quite looking to nanny govment to take care of ya. Buck up and pick yurselves up by yur bootstraps.

[bretster7]

ontheleft said, (no suprise)
Bush sent thousands of Iowa National Guard soldiers to Iraq to deal with the threat of nonexistent WMD


The National guard has a role in defending the country, idiot, as the name guard implies.
This mentality on the left, that the gov''t is the only one that can help is what is bringing this country down. Before the lib''s took over people did not expect to be bailed out by the government every two minutes.
When I was a kid in early seventies, we faced the same kind of situation. There was no gov''t rescue squad. We helped each other and relied on our own devices to overcome the flood.And we all pitched in afterwards to help rebuild our lives ourselves. We did not wait around for the Federal Government to come in a nd make all better.
Just more of the "womb to the tomb" government will take care of us mentality. Lazy , lazy lib''s

[bretster7]

oledakota said,
Cheney, Bush, and McCain, what do you expect? They are all warm and dry, and eating very heartily this day.



So are implying that Pelosi, Reed, and Biden are "fasting" in sympathy? Pathetic partisan moron.

[nordeck52]

Does the phrase "Global Warming" mean anything to anybody? When is the human race going to awaken to that that threatens every living thing on planet Earth?

Posted by plainjean at 02:54 PM : Jun 13, 2008

Just because there is a flood doesn''t mean global warming is involved. And besides, just because there is a natural disaster, it also doesn''t mean global warming is involved. Try again.

Yes, I''m aware that there is a global climate change going on. But that doesn''t mean that whenever there is bad weather we can blame it on the climate. Weather determines what sort of climate we have, not the other way around.

[creeper00]

"The water from the Cedar River, if you add salt tablets to them, is potable or drinkable. One fails to see the problem."
Posted by denn034 at 04:16 PM : Jun 13, 2008

Are you crazy? The Cedar runs for miles through hog and cattle country, picking up organisms along the say. Adding salt to the water will NOT kill those organisms and will only make anyone who drinks it thirstier.

I can''t believe you wrote this.

[denn034]

The water from the Cedar River, if you add salt tablets to them, is potable or drinkable. One fails to see the problem.

[denn034]

How do you produce water? Besides, Iowa has access to the Missouri river I think so, I''m not worried in the least about the Iowans.

[gopack443]

I''m not saying global warming isn''t happening, it is. I don''t try to say I know why. But it''s getting blamed on WAY to much. We did have weather, good and bad before anyone noticed the planet is getting warmer.

[aztecdakota]

Could we stop all the food and health care we are sending to our enemies in Iraq and Afganistan, and REVERT IT TO OUR FELLOW IOWA''S, FOR FREE, FOR FREE!!!
Cheney, Bush, and McCain, what do you expect? They are all warm and dry, and eating very heartily this day.

[ontheleft]

"n Des Moines, about 300 volunteers and members of the Iowa Army National Guard"

Bush sent thousands of Iowa National Guard soldiers to Iraq to deal with the threat of nonexistent WMD.

The five soldiers who remained in Iowa have their work cut out for them.

[redbds]

Does the phrase "Global Warming" mean anything to anybody? When is the human race going to awaken to that that threatens every living thing on planet Earth?

Posted by plainjean at 02:54 PM : Jun 13, 2008

Global warming is not real. It is just part of normal weather cycles. You conspiricy theorists spurred on by Al Gore blame everything on Global Warming. What a load of $%^&.

[mexinvasion]

The Earth is just way out of balance. Fires, floods, tornadoes, earthquakes. The Earth may not like what we have been doing to it. Trying to get our attention. Wanting the rich people of the world to stop doing everything they can to fill their vaults with gold, even if it means polluting everything.

[redbds]

Does the phrase "Global Warming" mean anything to anybody? When is the human race going to awaken to that that threatens every living thing on planet Earth?


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Posted by plainjean at 02:54 PM : Jun 13, 2008

[plainjean]

Does the phrase "Global Warming" mean anything to anybody? When is the human race going to awaken to that that threatens every living thing on planet Earth?