About Flooding in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP)
-- The rising 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 underwater.
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Volunteer Amanda Vaura wipes her face while waiting for another sandbag
Thursday
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
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The hospital's 176 patients, including about 30 in a nursing home facility,
were
being transferred 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.
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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.
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 in recent history, it was at 19.27 feet.
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"We are seeing a historic
hydrological event
taking place with unprecedented river levels occurring," said Brian Pierce,
a meteorologist
with the National Weather Service in Davenport, Iowa. "We're in uncharted
territory
-- this is an event beyond what anybody could even imagine."
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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.
Iowa Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties state disaster
areas.
Nine rivers are at or above historic flood levels. Amtrak's California
Zephyr line
was suspended across
Iowa
because of flooding along the BNSF Railway.
No deaths or serious injuries were reported in Iowa, but two men died in
their cars
in southern Minnesota and western lower Michigan.
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 due to
flooding,
said Chief Deputy Jon Pepper of the Iowa County Sheriff's Department.
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The rising Fond du Lac River forced hundreds from homes in Fond du Lac.
Violent thunderstorms Thursday and Friday brought widespread flooding to
Michigan's
Lower Peninsula that authorities say left some roads and bridges unstable or
impassable.
Authorities in Mason County advised drivers to stay off the roads unless it
was an
emergency, and the county closed or barricaded more than a dozen roadways.
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.
Despite all the water in Cedar Rapids, there was precious little for
toilets, cleaning,
or drinking.
Koch said the city is at critical levels and only one of the city's six
wells was
operating.
"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."
Similarly, the town of Lawrenceville, Illinois, grappled 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 threw
60,000 sandbags overnight to shore up a levee along the Des Moines River
north of
downtown.
There are about 200 homes in the neighborhood, which is under a voluntary
evacuation.
In Cedar Rapids, rescuers had to use boats to reach many stranded residents,
and
people could be seen dragging suitcases up closed highway exit ramps to
escape the
water.
"We're just kind of at God's mercy right now, so hopefully people that never
prayed
before this, it might be a good time to start," Linn County Sheriff Don
Zeller said.
"We're going to need a lot of prayers and people are going to need a lot of
patience
and understanding."
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Prisoners had to be moved from the Linn County jail, including some inmates
who had
been transferred from the Benton County jail in Vinton because of flooding.
The sheriff's
office also was underwater, Zeller said.
The surging river caused part of a railroad bridge and about 20 hopper cars
loaded
with rocks to collapse into the river. The cars had been positioned on the
bridge
in hopes of weighing it down against the rising water.
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In Austin, Minnesota, the Cedar River crested 7.4 feet above
flood
stage. The river went about 5 feet higher in a 2004 flood that caused major
damage
in the city.
"It seems like we're having the hundred-year flood every four years. It's
absurd,"
said Mark Dulitz, who had 4 inches of water in his basement and a ring of
sandbags
around his house.