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Midwest flooding
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Flooding Hits Northeast Iowa – Part 2
WATERLOO, IOWA Location: Northeast Iowa County: Black Hawk Population: 68,747
Record flooding continued from Janesville down the Cedar River through Cedar Falls to Waterloo. Waterloo's flood stage is 12.00 feet. The old record 21.90 feet was from March 29, 1961. The new record of 25.39 feet was set June 11, 2008, at 08:30 a.m. CDT. 26 feet is the maximum height the levee system was designed to protect Waterloo.
Previous Crests 1) 21.86 ft on 03/29/1961 2) 21.67 ft on 04/08/1965 3) 20.78 ft on 07/23/1999 4) 20.60 ft on 06/02/1993 5) 20.54 ft on 04/02/1993
Iowa Highway 218, Iowa Highway 63 and all but one bridge in Waterloo crossing the Cedar River were closed due to the flooding. This caused big city slow traffic jams for the morning and afternoon commutes to and from work.
The closed bridges and traffic jams caused problems never before seen by the Waterloo Police Department when responding to emergency calls. Everyone seemed to handle the slower drive very well. I didn't hear one horn honk and if there was someone waiting on a side-street to get into traffic they didn't have to wait long before someone would let them in. That was usually accompanied by a wave of thanks back.
Tuesday and into the early morning hours of Wednesday volunteers responded to calls to help fill, transport and stack sandbags wherever needed in the city.
One of the volunteers was Bob Ackerman. Ackerman stood watch as the flood waters rose to within eighteen inches of the top of the flood walls. As a teenager in the 1970's, Ackerman, 48, helped build the flood walls that are now keeping Waterloo from becoming a major disaster area.
At 3:00 a.m. the call went out, mainly by word of mouth, the flood wall at the Waterloo Center for the Arts and the newly built Phelps Pavilion was leaking. Within minutes, about two dozen volunteers showed up to work on the flood wall and unload the truckloads of sandbags being brought to the center on personal trucks. Some of the volunteers had been working more than twenty hours and after finishing at the Center for the Arts moved to the next building needing help.
Detachments of the Iowa Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 133rd Infantry from Waterloo and Dubuque, Iowa assisted the Waterloo Police Department in securing the flooded areas.
In 2006, the 1-133rd was sent to Iraq to serve in the on-going fight against terrorism and two weeks ago provided security in Parkersburg, Iowa after the town was devastated by an EF5 tornado. T
hursday another wave of storms are expected to dump six to ten inches of rain on the area and areas to the north.
Part One - http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-33855 Notes: Info on the 1-133rd’s return to Waterloo from Iraq - http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/07/31/iowa.soldiers.irpt/
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