My father tells me that the local news in Iowa is nothing but flood and more flood. The water surge/battle against the river has moved on to Iowa City and the University of Iowa. Here’s a picture from this Des Monies Register article about the impact of the flood on the University of Iowa. The Iowa River (which comes off of the Cedar at some point) runs right through the middle of campus, and these folks are passing up 500,000 books from the storage facility in the basement of the main library, which is normally quite safe, on higher ground about two blocks away from the river. My guess is that my old stomping grounds of the “English Philosophy Building” (EPB) is pretty soaked right about now.
My father also told me that FEMA and the Red Cross (or some kind of combination) set up a center in this giant Hy-Vee grocery store about 1.5 miles from my parent’s house in Cedar Falls to feed people who have been put out of their homes and otherwise displaced by the floods. He said that I-80 and I-380 are closed through Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, which basically means that if you are traveling east-west through eastern Iowa right now, you aren’t going anywhere. Yikes.
Hopefully this will change in the next two weeks…