Stickybuffalo.com

recapping the last 36 hours:

we woke up yesterday to water lapping over the curb and starting to creep up the lawn. in what seems like an astonishingly shortsighted decision from the vantage point of the next day, the official university of iowa position was Business As Usual, so amy went off to class while i charted a course via roads still open to menard’s for plastic sheeting. all the traffic has been funneled into a few streets, so what should have been a 10 minute trip took almost an hour. 

sandbagging re-commenced shortly thereafter with about eight of us — me, the next-door neighbors, my landlord’s dad (long story), and charlie. the sand trucks could no longer get to us, but we borrowed a canoe and began hauling up bags from the across-street neighbor’s now submerged levee, then schlepping them back across the street for ours. 

things really got going when a truckload of sand arrived at the end of the street, just beyond the water. one of the neighbors’ kids is on the UI football team and managed to raise a small army of players, and more of our friends turned out to help along with some total strangers — about fifty people in all. the neighbors grilled burgers and put out a vast spread of food & beverages for the troops. 

somebody turned up a johnboat and a second canoe, which were loaded up with sandbags and pulled down the street and up the driveway to the levee. this went on until about seven, when most of us were too exhausted to carry on. by that point we had a wall theoretically high enough to withstand, just barely, the crest level that was then being predicted. besides, we couldn’t have made it any higher without also widening it significantly, so it seemed like a good time to stop. 

by now the word had gotten around that mandatory evacuation was imminent, so we moved the last of our stuff up from the lower level, packed a few bags, closed the windows, unplugged the appliances, threw a sandbag over the floor drain, and got the hell out. we’ve relocated to higher ground and are staying with our friends jordan and janet. 

fortunately, even though our driveway and the street leading up to it are underwater, we still have access to the house via the hillside above, so we went back today to have a look. as of this afternoon the water had just reached the low end of our levee but nothing was getting through yet. there was a brief period of optimism when it looked as if the river would crest after another 3 feet, which might just leave us dry if the levee isn’t too leaky. but then we got hit with another heavy thunderstorm, which is probably going to raise the levels.

right now, best-case is a low crest and minimum leakage, worst-case is we lose everything, and most-likely-case is a few feet of water in the lower level. we’re lucky in that the city has backed off its mandatory evac policy and merely strongly urged us to bail, but they recognize we can get in and out easily so we’re not in immediate danger and they can’t exactly keep us out short of posting a guard. but the gas has been shut off and water may be next — we’ve already been having intermittent interruptions in electricity. so, living conditions are less than ideal and we’re not planning to return just yet.

that’s our flood story so far. the bigger story (bridges collapsing, hospitals evacuating, curfews, animal rescues) is more interesting, but you can find that stuff elsewhere. more to come… it may be a long summer.