AP Story: Floods swamp Iowa town; Drinking water near gone

Readers:  if you read this blog even once, you know we advocate every single household having a solid water storage, purification & production plan/program.  More specifically, you should have the following:

• Bulk Water Storage: if you have the room, some of those 55 gallon water barrels, with water rotated and treated periodically.  Smaller barrels for smaller space.
• Transportable Water Storage:  A couple of 5-7 gallon water carriers with good handles can be worth their weight in gold in an emergency where you must evacuate your home.  A few canteens or water bottles are also great.
• Water Filtering Capability that is portable: by this we mean backpacking-style water filters, such as the Katadyn brand (see our website).  These are CRITICAL because you may well be evacuated from your home...or see your water barrels float away in a flood (see story below).  But a high-quality water filter can be taken with you wherever you go, tucked away in a backpack, fanny pack, automobile or even a clothingpocket.  Get a couple of replace filter cartridges/elements, too.
• Water Purification Tablets:  Your filter may clog, or you may forget it.  Or, the water may be just SO stinking bad, that even a high-quality filter just isn't enough.  You need water purification tablets, preferably chlorine dioxide because of superior taste to the iodine-style tables, for these emergency times.  Cheap insurance. 

Why do we keep stressing this?  Read the story below...with credit to the Associated Press (AP) story on borrowed from Yahoo; shortened for brevity, emphasis & highlighting added:   

Floods swamp Iowa town;

Drinking water near gone

By AMY LORENTZEN, Associated Press Writer

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Hospital patients in wheelchairs and on stretchers were evacuated in the middle of the night as the biggest flood Cedar Rapids has ever seen swamped more than 400 blocks Friday and all but cut off the supply of clean drinking water in the city of 120,000.

As many as 10,000 townspeople driven from their homes by the rain-swollen Cedar River took shelter at schools and hotels or moved in with relatives.

About 100 miles to the west, officials in Iowa's biggest city, Des Moines, urged people in low-lying areas to clear out by Friday evening. The Des Moines River was expected to crest at 8 p.m., but officials said just before the expected peak that a malfunctioning gauge may have led them to overestimate how high it would rise.

[Some paragraphs omitted for sake of brevity.]

The flooding was blamed for at least two deaths in Iowa: a driver was killed in an accident on a road under water, and a farmer who went out to check his property was swept away.

Since June 6, Iowa has gotten at least 8 inches of rain. That came after a wet spring that left the ground saturated. As of Friday, nine rivers were at or above historic flood levels. More thunderstorms are possible in the Cedar Rapids area over the weekend, but next week is expected to be sunny and dry.

In Cedar Rapids, the engorged river flowed freely through downtown. At least 438 city blocks were under water, and in some neighborhoods the water was 8 feet high. Hundreds of cars were submerged, with only their antennas poking up through the water. Plastic toys bobbed in front of homes.

For decades, Cedar Rapids escaped any major, widespread flooding, even during the Midwest deluge of 1993, and many people had grown confident that rising water would pose no danger to their city. The flood this time didn't just break records; it shattered them.

[Some paragraphs omitted for brevity.]

Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties disaster areas, a designation that helps speed aid and opens the way for loans and grants. The damage in Cedar Rapids alone was a preliminary $737 million, Fire Department spokesman Dave Koch said.

The drenching has also severely damaged the corn crop in America's No. 1 corn state and other parts of the Midwest at a time when corn prices are soaring. But officials said it was too soon to put a price tag on the damage.

At Cedar Rapids' Prairie High School, where 150 evacuees waited, people could be seen crying in the cafeteria while others watched flood coverage on TVs set up in the gym. Tables were lined with shampoo, toothpaste, contact lens solution and other items, and piles of clothes were separated by size.

At the school, Lisa Armstrong wept as she watched TV news footage of her own rescue. She saw herself climbing into a boat, and watched rescuers trying to coax her dog out of the house. They finally grabbed the animal and pulled it out.

"I didn't think it was going to be as bad as it was, and we should have got out when we were told to leave," she said. "I didn't think or imagine anything like that."

Cedar Rapids warned people to conserve drinking water after the floodwaters knocked out electricity to all but one of the city's half-dozen or more wells. The one working well was protected by sandbags and generators that were pumping water away from it.

Hotels implored guests to use water only for drinking.

The city's newspaper, The Gazette, continued to cover the story with the help of emergency generators. But the floodwaters were just outside the front door, and the place had no running water. Portable bathrooms were set up outside for the staff.

Interstate 80 was closed east of Iowa City to Davenport after the Cedar River washed over the highway. Amtrak service aboard the California Zephyr was suspended between Denver and Chicago because of flooded-out tracks.

[Some paragraphs omitted for brevity.]

People in several northern Missouri communities, meanwhile, were piling up sandbags to prepare for flooding in the Missouri River, expected to crest over the weekend, and a more significant rise in the Mississippi River expected Wednesday.

***********end of AP Story************

This is RMHS speaking again.  As we've said before, better to have it and never need it, than to need it and not have it.  Right now there are a lot of folks in Iowa that probably would really like to have their own high-quality, highly-portable water filtering system, and/or a few water purification tablets. 

What about you??