I’m perfectly safe ISU isn’t in the of the cities being hit hardest by the floods. University of Iowa on the other hand is in a lot of trouble. The friend I went out to visit in Iowa City a couple of weeks ago was evacuated from his dorm a week ago, and today the University announced they were shutting down for at least a week while workers fought to protect the university hospitals where surgeries were ongoing and rescue books from the university libraries. The east and west halves of the city are effectively cut off from each other, and emergency personnel divided on both sides since they won’t be able to respond emergencies on the other side.
The worst hit is probably Cedar Rapids. They’ve lost almost all their drinking water, electricity is out for thousands and ten thousand have been evacuated from flooded portions of the city. A railroad bridge loaded down with train cars full of stone (to hold it down) was pushed off and floated away down river.
Most hit stories on the website of the Des Moines register:
Note stories #1 and #2 on that list. When I got the paper this morning the worst had past for Des Moines, but this morning the river broke through one of the levees built to hold it back after the floods of 1993 and water started flowing into down town Des Moines.
Lost of people have lost their homes. At the same time more than twenty percent of our crop acreage is just gone, and the remaining portions of fields will potentially be even less resistant to insects, fungal infections, and generally far more scraggly looking plants than would have been the case otherwise, so expect to see a substantially reduced harvest in the fall with increase more increases in the price of corn following.
Look who finally figured out how proxies work! and finally got to read up on everything from the last semester…hooray!
Comment by that one in China — June 23, 2008 @ 5:53 am