Flood Update

I drove to Iowa City from Davenport this morning. And afternoon. The 60-mile trip, with all of the detours thereunto appertaining, took 6 hours.

You know how every once in a while, a road floods, and then you take the parallel road on the other side of town to get where you need to go? Well this time around, the road flooded, and then all of the other roads flooded too. You can't get anywhere.

Some wonderful folks at the gas station helped me figure out who to call for the very latest road closures and how to work around them.

There's so much to report. Here are some tidbits:
- Two severe thunderstorms with rotating clouds passed through tonight. Up to golf-ball-sized hail, No actual tornadoes or injuries reported, thank God.
- Cedar Rapids' downtown is ALL under water. 400 city blocks of it. And by "under water", I mean you can no longer see the *tops* of the stop signs.
- There is only one bridge left connecting Iowa City to its neighbors, and connecting the two halves of Iowa City to itself. It is expected that by the time this flood event is over, the city will be bifurcated.
- The University is shut down indefinitely. Volunteers moved the rarest and most valuable books from the Main Library today -- they had to make some choices. The rest of the books will likely get soaked.
- Iowa City, Coralville and all of Johnson County are under daily curfew from 8:30 pm to 6:30 am -- no going anywhere near flood zones.
- 83 (of 99) Iowa counties are now declared disaster areas by the governors. Five of them (including mine) are declared presidential disaster areas on top of that.
- Hy-Vee is out of bottled water, but so far our water supply is holding steady (we're conserving). In Cedar Rapids, an army of volunteers successfully sandbagged their one remaining water facility today.
- I couldn't get to church tonight. The detour would have taken me through Des Moines.
- We haven't seen the worst of it yet. The crest is still coming, and another 2.5 feet of water is expected by Wednesday. In Cedar Rapids, the crest has come and gone, and now they can start to think about recovery.
- There's more to say, but that's enough for now. Summit House is safe, and dry, and we've been out helping as much as we can.

It's chilling, and heart-stopping, and overwhelming.

But.

It's not as bad as Katrina. It's not as bad as China. It's not as bad as Myanmar. And the flood relief efforts seem to be working pretty well. Sandbags arrive, volunteers are plentiful, people help each other, evacuees are housed. It's a sucky situation, but it could be worse.

I encourage everybody to donate to Lutheran Disaster Response, the Red Cross, the Salvation Army. They are doing good work.