Friday, July 25, 2008

The Flood



Many people have asked me about whether I had to swap my house for a rowboat when they watched all of Iowa flooding on MSNBC or CBS Nightly News. Yes, I was here in time for the flooding. However, fortunately Keokuk stayed relatively unscathed. All the locals kept talking about the "flood of '83'" and how this was supposed to be even worse. The news kept reporting that it was going to set a record, and we did see on the news that Cedar Rapids was underwater, and hear of all the road closures, bridge closures, and it seemed like we were going to be cut off completely from Illinois and Missouri for a while. As the flood worked its way down south through Iowa, we started to get prepared (we're in the very southeast corner of the state). They gave us the day it was supposed to crest and everyone talked in anticipation. Wal-Mart was extra busy as everyone was stocking up on water and essentials. Lots of sandbagging was being done, in fact, the Sunday before we had a 50 minute sacrament meeting and then everyone in our branch was deployed to go sandbag or make lunches for all the other sandbaggers the rest of the day. We also brought kids down from the school about every day for a week to sandbag. But then it became just kind of wait and see. Well, the big day hit (the day the river was supposed to crest), and the water did rise about 25 feet, however, the main town of Keokuk is set up on a hill from the river, and although some of the riverfront parks and a few homes along the river went under, we remained relatively unscathed. The only way it impacted me was a few blisters from sandbagging. :) In fact, our bridge into Illinois was one of few that remained open the whole time, although it was cut down to two lanes and was raised about 10 feet with rocks and gravel. Here are a few pictures of the flooding as well as some kids sandbagging from school.

4 comments:

Vigoren Family said...

Love to hear in such a succinct way what exactly you're doing. It's nice to actually see some students, too! Sounds like a great place to be and I hope it continues to go well. Looks beautiful too...even with all of that water!

Emily said...

We were so glad you were safe! Phew! Hopefully we'll avoid any hurricanes!

brooklyn said...

fun to read and see exactly what you're doing. sounds like something you would be great at.

and keokuk looks pretty!

cherlyn and family said...

my goodness, what a mess. I hope you guys are doing well.