 CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — They sandbagged
the entrance to Mercy Medical Center and started bailing when the water
started creeping in, but it was no use. The water was 2 inches deep on
the emergency room floor by Thursday night, with more coming.
So the thousands of people evacuated because of the worst flood in
Cedar Rapids history include some of the city's most vulnerable: 176
patients, some of them frail, about 30 of them from a nursing home at
the medical center. Sonya Thornton, a technician at St. Luke's Hospital
in Cedar Rapids, was called in at 2 a.m. to help take many of them in.
"Those poor people. They looked half-terrified and half-thankful
that they had someplace to go where they could finally rest and be
cared for," she said.
The flooding of the Cedar River was beyond residents' worst
nightmares. It was expected to crest Friday at nearly 32 feet, an
astonishing 12 feet higher than the old record, set in 1929.
"It's flooding of biblical proportions," Michelle Myers said at a
Wal-Mart. "There's just no other way to explain it, there's nothing,
there's just water. Driving home, you see people in boats, just rowing
along next to the interstate."
She and other shoppers were loading up on — ironically enough —
water. The flooding all but cut off the supply of clean drinking water
in the city of 120,000, and people from hospital workers to hotel
guests were urged not to shower.
At least 438 blocks were swamped Friday and as many as 10,000 townspeople driven from their homes.
About 100 miles to the west, officials in Iowa's biggest city, Des
Moines, urged people in low-lying areas to clear out by Friday evening.
The Des Moines River was expected to crest at 8 p.m., but officials
said just before the expected peak that a malfunctioning gauge may have
led them to overestimate how high it would rise.
Officials became less worried that the levees would be topped, but
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Roger Less said the city of
190,000 residents would not be out of danger until Saturday.
"We have a lot of soft spots in those levees," Less said. "We are
still at very high river levels even though we are starting to see some
slight drops." He added: "We don't think the victory is won at this
point."
Mayor Frank Cownie, who said the call evacuation call was an attempt
to "err on the side of citizens and residents," later said he didn't
regret that residents were advised to leave, despite the faulty gauge.
"Absolutely not," Mayor Frank Cownie said. "I was here in 1993. I
saw what happened. I saw what happened to my business. I saw what was
happening to every other thing in Des Moines."
The flooding was blamed for at least two deaths in Iowa: A driver
was killed in an accident on a road under water, and a farmer who went
out to check his property was swept away.
Since June 6, Iowa has gotten at least 8 inches of rain. That came
after a wet spring that left the ground saturated. As of Friday, nine
rivers were at or above historic flood levels. More thunderstorms are
possible in the Cedar Rapids area over the weekend, but next week is
expected to be sunny and dry.
In Cedar Rapids, the engorged river flowed freely through downtown.
In some neighborhoods the water was 8 feet high. Hundreds of cars were
submerged, with only their antennas poking up through the water.
Plastic toys bobbed in front of homes.
For decades, Cedar Rapids escaped any major, widespread flooding,
even during the Midwest deluge of 1993, and many people had grown
confident that rising water would pose no danger to their city. The
flood this time didn't just break records; it shattered them.
Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties disaster
areas, a designation that helps speed aid and opens the way for loans
and grants. The damage in Cedar Rapids alone was a preliminary $737
million, Fire Department spokesman Dave Koch said.
The drenching has also severely damaged the corn crop in America's
No. 1 corn state and other parts of the Midwest at a time when corn
prices are soaring and food shortages have led to violence in some poor
countries. But officials said it was too soon to put a price tag on the
damage.
At Cedar Rapids' Prairie High School, where 150 evacuees waited,
people could be seen crying in the cafeteria, while others watched
flood coverage on TVs set up in the gym. Tables were lined with
shampoo, toothpaste, contact lens solution and other items, and piles
of clothes were separated by size.
At the school, Lisa Armstrong wept as she watched TV news footage of
her own rescue. She saw herself climbing into a boat and watched
rescuers trying to coax her dog out of the house. They finally grabbed
the animal and pulled it out.
"I didn't think it was going to be as bad as it was, and we should
have got out when we were told to leave," she said. "I didn't think or
imagine anything like that."
Jeffrey Lucas said that water came pouring into his rental home as
he opened the door and dashed out. "I just grabbed what I could and
started walking down the road, and I had water up to my chest," Lucas
said. He left his cat, Tales, behind.
"I just opened up the cupboards and put the food as high as I could
and left one window open just in case," he said. "He was my little
buddy."
Cedar Rapids warned people to conserve drinking water after the
floodwaters knocked out electricity to all but one of the city's
half-dozen or more wells. The one working well was protected by
sandbags and generators that were pumping water away from it.
The city's newspaper, The Gazette, continued to cover the story with
the help of emergency generators. But the floodwaters were just outside
the front door, and the place had no running water.
Portable bathrooms were set up outside for the staff.
Interstate 80 was closed east of Iowa City to Davenport after the
Cedar River washed over the highway. Amtrak service aboard the
California Zephyr was suspended between Denver and Chicago because of
flooded-out tracks.
Michigan's Lower Peninsula, meanwhile, was rattled by violent
thunderstorms Friday even as utilities were still trying to reconnect
tens of thousands of customers who lost power earlier in the week.
There were more outages as the storms knocked down trees, damaged
buildings and brought widespread flooding to Mason and Manistee
counties.
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