My city's going to be renamed Atlantis [Iowa Flooding]

[Master of Cards]

And the flooding is a net effect because Missouri is going to get screwed over this, because the large area that got flooded in 1993? Leeved off and homes and businesses made.

[Broomstick]

Is that just from rain?

Yes.

CNN has reported they they're starting to evacuate parts of Des Moines, Iowa. 83 of the 99 Iowa counties are now declared disaster areas.

I-80, one of the main road links connecting the east and west half of the continental US, is under water in Iowa, as is the main BNSF rail road line. OK, that's bad - railroad and highway are the way we move things from one side of the country to the other. Yes, there are alternates, but that means detouring hundreds of kilometers north or south to avoid the flooding. That means delays in shipping things like food. (I am seriously thinking of expanding the garden again....)

The storms and flooding are also affecting parts of Minnesota and Michigan. Hundreds of thousands are without power in Michigan, with some roads and rail impassible due to floodwaters.

Missouri is going to catch hell - all that water causing problems in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, it ALL flows past Missouri. Expect to hear about flooding in the St. Louis area after this weekend, people in the northern half of the state are already sandbagging in anticipation of what's coming down the rivers. The Mississippi will be jumping banks and levees.

[Darth Mall]

Here's a live webcam that shows some flooding in Davenport. Click the button in the lower right corner and then wait your turn and you can control the camera angle and zoom.

http://webcam46.ci.davenport.ia.us/top/liveapplet.html

Haha, I was just down there.

The flooding doesn't look terrible, and they are building up dirt walls to hold it back. Luckily its mostly parkinglots and park stuff that gets flooded.

It doesnt seem much worse than it was when it flooded earlier this year.

Pictures will be up soon

[Darth Mall]

Ok, here are some of the pictures I took, I'll put a dedicated thread up in AMP after I get back from work.

PICT6250 edited





PICT6223 edited
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwillmott/2576447464/



PICT6388 edited
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dwillmott/2576448488/

[Lonestar]

Second Picture:

WHERE IS YOUR LIBERTARIAN OVERLORD NOW?

(Ron Paul poster)

[Dark Hellion]

I just went over the Rock and it isn't very flooded at all. Compared to '93 or even some of the earlier 2000's floods it is pretty minor, although that might change in the next few days.

[SirNitram]

Flooding's hit 30 feet already, is expected to get deeper tomorrow. E-fucking-gads.

1993 was only 19.27 and was considered the biggest in recorded.

[Patrick Degan]

I wonder how many of the Republikan "Let New Orleans DIE" crowd have just lost everything to this disaster in Iowa? Well, my sympathies even to them. This is a terrible thing for anybody to have to suffer through.

[Darth Mall]

Second Picture:

WHERE IS YOUR LIBERTARIAN OVERLORD NOW?

(Ron Paul poster)

Haha, that building is always covered in Ron Paul stuff.

And posted in AMP, here is my photo story. All sorts of pictures of the flooding.

[Zadius]

Man, the Cedar Rapids area is devastated. A relative of mine owns a small convenience store in Anamosa. I haven't heard if anything happened to it. It's on Elm Street, which has been evacuated after a levee broke, according to a news source. I hope to find out more tomorrow. They're saying it may get worse before it gets better.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Will FEMA fuck up the relief effort again?

[SirNitram]

Will FEMA fuck up the relief effort again?

More interested if the state is asked to become a Federal Territory before Fed Relief is sent in, myself...

[Darth Wong]

Second Picture:

WHERE IS YOUR LIBERTARIAN OVERLORD NOW?

(Ron Paul poster)

No doubt they would argue that if left to their own devices, private industry would have solved this problem. It's not necessary to explain how.

[Darth Raptor]

This is bizarre, almost surreal. While the county I live in (Keokuk) is right in the midst of the worst-hit counties, by virtue of our elevation/distance from major rivers we're almost untouched. As I've not visited any of the flooded areas personally and am only aware of the damage through the news, it almost doesn't seem real. Even more bizarre considering how we weren't spared in '93.

[weemadando]

Second Picture:

WHERE IS YOUR LIBERTARIAN OVERLORD NOW?

(Ron Paul poster)

No doubt they would argue that if left to their own devices, private industry would have solved this problem. It's not necessary to explain how.

Halliburton will buy all affected states at a discount price, subcontract redevelopment to KBR, security to BlackWater (after all, there's going to be a lot of angry potential insurgents who will want to have access to what's no longer their property because Halliburton have bought it from the gov't) and then redevelop it all and re-sell it to the original owners.

Of course, any sub contracting will be double-billed as is the norm for this work. And thus, because private industry will be getting all this money from the gov't for this work, and the gov't taxes private industry, it's all cost neutral. Right? Right?

[Broomstick]

Update-- although this is, of course, spreading beyond Iowa. Highlights added, along with some commentary

BURLINGTON, Iowa (CNN) -- Floodwaters receded Tuesday in Iowa, where 17 people have died after two weeks of floods and tornadoes, but the water headed down the Mississippi River, breaching levees in Illinois and Missouri.

"The good news is the floodwater is receding in much of the state," said David Miller, administrator for the Iowa Homeland Security and Emergency Management Division. "The bad news is we're still in a flood fight."

Levees all along the mid-Mississippi were being topped with sandbags Tuesday as the river, fed by its flooded tributaries, continued to rise. (31 of the 48 contiguous United States (Alaska and Hawaii not being directly connected to those 48) drain their rivers into the Mississippi, along with (to a limited extent) Lake Michigan)

Several major rivers that flow into the Mississippi have escaped their banks, including the Cedar, Des Moines and Iowa rivers.

Authorities closed the Great River Bridge on U.S. 34, which connects Illinois to Iowa over the swollen Mississippi, as rising waters breached a 300-foot area of a levee near Gulf Port shortly before 5 a.m.

In Illinois, National Guardsmen and prison inmates joined the effort to top levees with sandbags as authorities evacuated about 400 people in Henderson County.

In Missouri, water began to top multiple levees east of Highway 79, forcing authorities to suspend sandbagging efforts at a levee near Foley, officials said Tuesday.

In Burlington, Iowa, Mayor William Ell said the levee breach in Illinois had relieved the town somewhat, but the respite was expected to be brief because the river had not yet crested.

"I'm feeling quite sorry for the folks over in Illinois. But the river [in Burlington] did actually drop some. I think it was eight, nine inches or something like that," he said.

Race against time

Pete Wilson, the owner of a mattress warehouse that started flooding Tuesday, said the levee break would give him time to get more pumps going before the river starts rising again.

"If this river comes up to 26 feet (8 meters), it's going to be clear to the top of our levee here, and I don't know if we're going to be able to hold it," said Wilson. "It was at 25-7 earlier this morning, and I just about gave up on it."

President Bush said he and a team will travel to Iowa, where natural disasters have killed 17 people, displaced 38,000 others and damaged $1 billion worth of crops since May 25. [That's mostly corn and soy - two crops used for industry as well as food for both humans and animals. That's potentially much more serious than losing, say, the spinach crop)

A housing task force of state and federal officials plan to meet Wednesday to figure out the best way to house displaced residents, said Bill Vogel, a federal coordinator with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, Henderson County Chief Deputy Donnie Seitz said thousands of acres were likely to be flooded. (In other words, the damage is only going to get worse. Again, that's corn and soy country)

He said authorities are concerned about the communities of Gulf Port, Carman, Lomax and Dallas City.

"It's been an uphill battle from the start, and the levee just broke loose," he said.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich called up 1,100 National Guard members to assist in sandbagging efforts, said Patti Thompson of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency.

"We were very, very disappointed that this levee broke today," said Thompson. "It's a very powerful river, and it can be hard to harness."

Dozens of National Guardsmen and residents in Gladstone, Illinois, about 10 miles northeast of Gulf Port, were tossing sandbags onto a makeshift levee to keep floodwater from flowing into the farming hamlet of 300 people.

Sheriff John Jefferson of Hancock County, Illinois, said water was "very, very close" to the top of some areas of the county's two levees.

"We've had to evacuate some areas already, but the areas that have not been evacuated yet, we're just keeping our fingers crossed and hoping that the levee will hold," he said.

The Mississippi River borders the entire western edge of the county.

In two of the county's communities, Rio Vista and Pontoosuc, power has been shut off in all but 20 residences, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office said.

In Northwest Missouri, towns and cities along the Mississippi River were bracing for flooding later this week as swollen waters head downriver.

Communities at high risk of record flooding include Quincy, Illinois, (Quincy is actually a major Illinois city, although I don't expect those outside the US have heard of it) and Hannibal, Missouri, according to National Weather Service modeling. Moderate flooding is possible later in the week in Alton, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri.

In Washington, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa said the flooding has devastated his state's corn crop. Floods prompted farm-equipment manufacturer John Deere to idle two plants in Waterloo, Iowa, he said.

"Across eastern Iowa, the flooding rivers have washed out railroad lines; Mississippi barge traffic has come to a halt and [flooding has] closed major roadways," said Harkin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee. "Thousands of Iowa businesses, large and small, have been impacted."

Harkin said Iowans "are a resilient and resourceful people," but will need "generous federal assistance" to recover.

FEMA has set up six disaster recovery centers in Iowa and has provided nearly $4 million in assistance, state and federal officials reported. So far, 24 counties are under federal disaster declarations, making residents eligible for individual aid, Lt. Gov. Patty Judge reported.

By Tuesday afternoon, residents of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where the Cedar River inundated more than 400 city blocks, were beginning to return home as the rivers lessened, said Lu Barron, a Linn County supervisor.

We're doing pretty good," she said. "People are getting into their businesses, and getting into their homes." she said.

She estimated that thousands of people had returned to their homes after authorities inspected them to make sure they were safe.
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The death of one woman whose body was found in her car Monday was determined unrelated to the floods, said Courtney Greene, a spokeswoman for the governor's office and the state Emergency Operations Center.

Amtrak service from Chicago, Illinois, to St. Paul, Minnesota, and to Kansas City, Missouri, was disrupted by the flooding.(Freight by rail has also been interrupted)

And, oh yes - tonight the Red Cross announced they were out of money. Broke. No pennies left in the piggy bank.

This is starting to sound worse than the Great Mississippi Flood of 1993....

[Adrian Laguna]

I wonder if some cities could have been raised to deal with flooding. Chicago did it, but to deal with drainage problems, the area is so flat that any rain turns it into a marsh.

[Broomstick]

That still does not solve the problem of the flooded farm fields, which are arguably worse than flooded buildings. Buildings, as you point out, can be jacked up - fields can't. You can relocate a town, but not farmland.

[Dartzap]

It's really odd, this has barely been mentioned in the news over here, where the media seems to still be concentrating on China and the floods there instead.

With those field crops gone, what are food supplies going to be like there?

[Broomstick]

Well, we won't starve. The US is still wealthy enough to buy food from abroad if necessary (and if available).

Prices, however, will rise. Since there is way too much high-fructose corn syrup and corn starch in most processed foods loss of a lot of corn will seriously impact that.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but there several specialized varieties of maize grown in the US for specific purposes in specific areas. My own area, for example, centered on Valparaiso, Indiana, grows a significant percentage of the world's popcorn crop. Since we (and 4 of the other 5 claimed "popcorn capitals of the world") are not flooded out I doubt the price of popcorn will rise significantly. So, which corn regions are flooded out can be significant - a sweet corn failure will affect corn intended to be eaten as a vegetable directly by people, but will have little effect on, say, corn meal, tortilla, and animal feed prices. A bad year for flint corn may leave ample and cheap sweet corn in the produce aisle, but severely impact animal feed and drive up meat prices.

Since I don't eat corn myself I don't have a vivid recall of price effects for the 1993 flood, but even for someone such as myself there will still be an effect because of greater demand for other foods to replace sweet corn (if that's affected), price rises in sweeteners and starches, and price rises in industrial applications that are either chasing a diminishing pool of raw materials or have to find alternative feedstocks for their processes.

It's a little early to tell the full extent of the damage. Although Iowa clearly has suffered a major impact, as has Wisconsin (from a different river system flooding), the water is still rising in Illinois, Missouri, and downstream. It's not yet certain which fields there will be lost. While there will almost certainly be levee breaks no one can say for certain which levees will break - a breaking levee will devastate one area, but tend to spare the downstream communities from greater damage.

Now, soy can be planted later in the season than corn, and in some cases there is a possibility of replanting (in my area some farmers, with planting delayed to wet conditions and minor flooding, they have done just that, or replaced lost corn with soy) but again how that will play out is not certain at this point. Even though soy is planted in some of the formerly flooded fields, though, it will not be sufficient to replace all of the soy already lost.

Again, soy is an important crop in the US - soy is in many products to boost protein or alter texture or replace animal fats, as well as becomming more popular in it's own right in condiments, tofu, edamame, and "soynuts" type snack food. All of those will be impacted. Soy oil is a common cooking oil (I have a liter and a half of it in my kitchen right now) so rising soy prices and decreased supplies will create greater demand for other vegetable oils, which can also drive up the prices of those. Soy is also an industrial crop, and that will affect everything from lubricants to the ink used in printing newspapers, magazines, and books.

So, while the full damage is not known, it WILL drive up food prices, both directly for actual foods as well as corn and soy derived additives; it WILL drive up meat prices, as most animal feed in the US is corn and soy based; and it WILL drive up the prices in various industrial applications not normally associated with food crops, from ink to plastics to fuel. This will be in addition to an economy already in recession with significant job losses, decreasing real wages, and all that other stuff we've talked about.

As I said, Americans won't starve - we aren't THAT poor (Most of us. Yet) but this is really going to hit just about everyone's wallet. Our standard of living is going to drop for a year or two. We'll be spending a lot more money on food (and other essentials) and less on "stuff", particularly consumer goods produced in other countries.

Please see last line in my sig - while everyone is not going to go through "hard times" a lot of us will in the near future.

Meanwhile - here are a couple of reasons why I believe the Midwest Floods aren't receiving that much attention outside the US:

1) The Mississippi floods every year: just like the Nile and the Amazon and other major rivers of that sort. To some extent, the beginning of this was a repeat of every other year. I mean, why else would we build so many levees, keep so many records of flood levels, and so forth? Why do people build in such flood plains? Well, for the price of getting flooded out every so often the land gets revitalized by the silt deposits left by such floods - such land is quite fertile post-flood. It becomes a cost-benefit matter in regards to how close to the river do you want to live.

2) It's a slow-motion disaster: unlike like an earthquake or dam burst - which is a lot of what China is dealing with - these floods do not happen with extreme suddenness. As a result, people are able to get out of the way and there is little loss of human life given the size of the disaster (animal stocks are a different matter - it's not unusual for herds to drown in such floods because you simply can't move that many livestock out of the way fast enough). Without dramatic death tolls this news is less likely to make the front page.

3) Bias regarding Americans: from "they deserve it, the smug rich arrogant bastards/infidels" to a feeling that the US is wealthy and/or capable enough to handle anything, US disasters tend not to garner the same outpouring of sympathy as disaster elsewhere. And to some extent it's true - as I've said, few if any will starve, we have enough wealth to aid our needy (whether or not we have the will to do so is another matter), and we can buy what we need from others rather than requesting charity. This will not destroy us as a country, result in a government coup, or a lot of other Bad Things. Even for those most adversely affected it's a survivable disaster and most people will be able to recover and rebuild a good life post-flood. That does not, of course, diminish their current pain. This is an utterly horrible thing to go through and it will affect not just those with their homes under water but the rest of us as well, albeit indirectly. The losses are very real, even if they aren't on par with mass starvation.

[Dark Hellion]

Another reason is probably the low death count. Despite have an area equal to a significant portion of many European countries under water under 20 (as I had last heard, correct me if I am wrong) have died. Given news bias when comparing those that have died with those that have lost everything, losing less people than a Great White concert doesn't make for great international news.

Additionally, Iowa and Illinois are very good at dealing with floods. As Broomstick says, we get some amount of flooding every year, from snow melt and spring rain all the way from Minnesota flowing down the Mississippi, that's a lot of water in a river that while long, is fairly small here in the QCA. However, the flood management systems we have in place can handle massive amounts of water, and only the staggeringly high crest this year caused the damage we are seeing.

Interestingly, despite living within 1 mile of the Mississippi, I have experienced no flooding at all. I understand that the closest 2 blocks have been somewhat flooded, but life has remained unchanged for me in Rock Island, and yet Davenport is experiencing extreme flooding. I am not up to snuff on local politics, but I have to be curious why such a thing is occuring.

[Master of Cards]

Does anyone know if the Missouri will rise with the Mississippi? Because if it backs up enough The Chesterfield valley might flood like in 1993 but now there's a lot more built up areas in the valley and the 2 major highways running through it.

[Siege]

The floodings (specifically in Cedar Rapids) were mentioned on the news here (Netherlands), but then again we have this odd national fascination with water. As soon as serious flooding occurs somewhere, it usually makes the news.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Does anyone know if the Missouri will rise with the Mississippi? Because if it backs up enough The Chesterfield valley might flood like in 1993 but now there's a lot more built up areas in the valley and the 2 major highways running through it.

I think the rain is in the wrong places for that to happen, though I'm not terribly familiar with midwest flood basins.

[Master of Cards]

Does anyone know if the Missouri will rise with the Mississippi? Because if it backs up enough The Chesterfield valley might flood like in 1993 but now there's a lot more built up areas in the valley and the 2 major highways running through it.

I think the rain is in the wrong places for that to happen, though I'm not terribly familiar with midwest flood basins.

The problem is that I haven't heard of large rains up in the Missouri basin but the river is pretty high compared to the last year.