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(my town)

In waterloo --flood closed all the bridges.
lucky we have a hospital on both sides of the river.
parents house was flooded in the rual and had to get a boat to save them.
no way to get to work but its nice to spend time with son.
Wife stuck in cedar falls wit her mom.

Man, you guys, good luck out there! Looks like a mess at the very least, with certainly the potential for much worse.

I'm sorry you're having such flooding this year. I hope it ends soon.

They just showed the flooding in Iowa on Greek TV. I hope you and your fellow citizens are ok, dieselbenz.

anticapitalista wrote:They just showed the flooding in Iowa on Greek TV. I hope you and your fellow citizens are ok, dieselbenz.

I am an hour northwest of Des Moines and four hours due west of Cedar Rapids. (You can cross all of Greece in four hours, can't you? <grin>)

We are now very dry. Put in a 1/3 hp sump pump (20" diameter by 25" deep pit) today that could have saved the Titanic. I tested it today and it absolutely blew a stream of water across the lawn, it pumped the pit so fast. I could open a garden hose full-blast into the pit and the pump would stay ahead of it.

I really feel sorry for the folks in Cedar Rapids. BEAUTIFUL town that is now partly underwater. This is being compared locally, and on some networks nationally, to Katrina / New Orleans, except Cedar Rapids is an affluent WHITE college town, as opposed to New Orleans. Ok, New Orleans had a college but the comparison stops there.

Best estimate (my wife's and probably NOT conservative since it was made while carrying ruined stuff from the basement to the trash pile-- all but a couple of items"her" stuff) is that we lost about $5,000, and perhaps $10,000 worth of items. Personally, I'd knock off a zero but there are times of stress when it is best to not contradict the wife!

Others, such as some in Cedar Rapids, have lost their houses plus their car(s) plus most belongings. Since flood insurance is prohibitively expensive, many will have to wait for Federal Disaster dollars to flow in before they can recover and/or will be left homeless and still paying a mortgage on a house that no longer exists.

It is sad. I consider what happened to me over the last two weeks to be walking away unscathed from a high-speed motorcycle accident -- and having not worn a helmet.

Don

Wow, that's a lot of damage. I wish you the best of luck getting back on your feet!