When The Levee Breaks....

It is a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Central Iowa, a sunny day with an occasional passing shower. It is so pleasant here, that it is hard to imagine how much devastation is so close by. It has been a horrible week for our new state. Hundreds of blocks in Cedar Rapids are still underwater, and Iowa City is in bad shape too. In Des Moines, there is a lot of damage, but it could have been much, much worse. As Sarah mentioned, we went downtown on Thursday to see the floods. The water was almost as high as the famous floods of '93, and still forecast to rise much more. The city was mostly dry, but a maze of sandbags. Part of downtown had been flooded by a flash flood due to rain, but had already been pumped out. All of the downtown bridges were closed, and the river flowed right up to the tops of the arches underneath. On Friday morning, the city of Des Moines announced that the river was cresting, and that all low-lying areas had to be evacuated, including the entire downtown area. There was an urgent call for volunteers, so I went to help out after work. I had to get a tetanus shot, and go to the volunteer headquarters to sign up. They sent me to a sandbag site, where I filled sandbags for a few hours. It was hard work, and I learned a lot about the Iowa spirit. The place looked like an ant hill, with hundreds of people shoveling furiously around mounds of sand. Heavy equipment moved around between the piles of sand, delivering more sand and taking away filled sandbags. After sandbagging, I headed home, crossing a rural stretch of I-80 north of the city, where everything on both sides of the freeway for 4 miles was underwater, and the water lapped right at the edges of the road. The news on the radio was good, though. The river had just crested and the levees were holding. Unlike Cedar Rapids, it looked like Des Moines was going to be mostly safe. The floods had been higher than '93, but the damage was nowhere near as bad. At about 4 AM yesterday morning, our weather radio went off. A levee had broken in the Birdland neighborhood of Des Moines. By 7 AM, the National Guard had built a big berm of sandbags and sand on 2nd Avenue and it was holding back the water. At 8 AM, it broke and flooded the nighborhood, while the news showed live helicopter shots of the water taking over one house at a time. I went back to the sandbag site, this time as part of a small group of people from church. Now that the levee had broken, the mood was much more serious and urgent than the day before. People worked hard, and the sandbags were taken away right as they were filled. It is a strange feeling, being close to flooded areas but having life go on as normal. It makes you feel a bit guilty. Today was a much more normal day for us. We went to church, then we actually went to the Iowa Cubs game. This would have been unthinkable a couple days ago. The ballpark is at the lowest part of downtown, at the confluence of the Des Moines and Racoon rivers. The ballpark was an island of sandbags two days ago, with water filling the parking lots. Today, the water had dropped enough to say "play ball". We parked in an area that had been underwater, and passed heavy equipment removing temporary levees across the parking entrances. The ballgame was a double header, but we left after the first game because Asher was tired and Sarah was sunburned. It was a good game, a blowout for the Cubbies. Only a few days now until we head to Maine. It will be nice to take a vacation, and to see family!