Iowa Floods As Devastating As Katrina ?

I work at the Cedar Rapids Gazette in the Iowa City bureau and shifted from sports to news for the last week or so to cover the floods. From my observations and about 3 stories per day, just about every community south of Cedar Rapids had advance warning about the flooding and officials notified the public almost every other hour about the issues. Thousands of volunteers in just about every community busted their asses to reinforce the levees, and when they failed, it's chalked up to natural disaster, not anybody's fault. It sucks in every way, but when the flooding is over, most Iowans affected will look for a helping hand -- not a handout -- to get their lives and communities back to order.

I saw a community sacrifice its water facility and reject 400 National Guardsmen to give help to another city because it's likely no effort could have saved their water facility. I saw the Iowa River flood a street so quickly that a man started driving on concrete and ended up nearly drowning before he was rescued. Our main newsroom put together the paper in extremely difficult situations. Without air conditioning and operating only with help from a generator, they really stepped up big. Everyone had to pass military checkpoints to get into the building.

The flooding was a complete shock to Cedar Rapids and a few other communities in east-central Iowa. Nobody was prepared for it because the massive flooding was unexpected. So far the price tag to infrastructure alone is $1 billion and counting in CR. This is the only community you can compare to Katrina, but it's a minor comparison. As JB said, Iowa's leaders have their schitt together, have a plan in place and will take care of the issues as quickly as possible.

This is not Hurricane Katrina for the country, although it's as close as it can be for Iowans. I think I can speak for most Iowans to say it's a good thing Mike Brown, Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin are nowhere near this state.

 

Warnings went out that the levees were going to break and flood the city?

 

That's just plain disgusting. I always wondered what kind of people his audience were. Now we know.

 

Well said and it needed to be said.

 

With respect to those in Iowa, you are just now coming into the stage where you might need a handout. Government assistance doesn't come, and isn't effective outside of emergency equipment, etc., until after the fact anyway.

If memory serves, I didn't hear any complaining out of Louisiana until after the hurricane was over and the flooding began later when they thought they were out of the woods. The complaining began when it was clear the federal government's response was pathetically short of the mark. They SHOULD have been complaining, the response was woeful given the scale of the disaster.

I've seen it here on the board for several days now and bit my lip, but frankly, I think it's offensive to puff up the civic pride at the expense of another region that is perceived to have not handled it as well. Why does it matter?

My home state, Wisconsin, and my current place of residence, Indiana, has dealt with very bad flooding too. A significant portion of my own city was underwater and a pair of my own sports guys have lost nearly everything. Both locales have handled it as well as Iowa has.

Given that, the last thing I would ever think to do is claim scoreboard over another state/region because my home area's are perceived to have handled it better. It just strikes me as a waste of time to even care about something like that.

I mean, who can reserve anything but sympathy for someone who resorts to needing a handout? To me, there is no shame in needing government assistance to get your life back in order in the face of a life-changing disaster such as that faced in New Orleans and over the last week in Iowa.

As Del B Vista pointed out, there are no "winners' during a situation like this, no matter how effective the government response is.

 

One of the most noteworthy instances of a complete horseshit thread turning into worthwhile reading that I've seen in some time.

 

Once again another example of someone seeing what they want to see. In no way was this thread started to pit one region against another or criticize one group of citizens over another.

It is not an unreasonable question to ask why there seem to be less problems in Iowa. Perhaps FEMA learned from the mistakes that were made in NO.

 

It wasn't directed at you, Boom, it was directed at some of the posts I've seen in various threads, some from Iowans, who have claimed they've handled things better than Louisiana did. How can that even be quantified, and more to the point, why is it important in the first place?

The truth is, we don't how the federal government has responded yet, because their primary role is in the recovery portion of a disaster, not the disaster itself which is generally handled by local authorities, and the recovery is just beginning there.

In a week, we could be hearing justified bitching from Iowans about how FEMA is treating them, just as we did from Louisiana at the same stage of their recovery. FEMA problems have already happened to a certain extent in my area, which was flooded out the week before Iowa was.

 

It's irony that you would follow that first graph with the second graph.

So I will spell it out to you again:

These floods are not Katrina. You cannot compare the responses of two completely different events. One has had limited and targeted evacuations over time. The other had massive evacuations in a span of a couple of days. One has devastation in parts of cities that are otherwise fairly functional. The other completely destroyed some fairly well populated cities and crippled a large metropolitan area. One had some storms that did damage and helped expedite the arrival of the terrible floods. The other had a storm that created widespread infrastructure destruction over an entire region of the country, virtually overnight before bringing on a flood of epic proportions. In one, there is no problem with communication. In the other, communication infrastructure was crippled to the point where it was close to destroyed, not only in New Orleans but hours away in areas that weren't even affected by the weather. You couldn't get cell phones or satellite phones to work properly even as far away as southeast Texas. Phones were useless in New Orleans because landlines were gone and cell towers were crippled. One event has easy ways for those affected to be removed from the area of destruction. The other was completely inundated with the flood, making it hard to get people in and out. One had some loss of life. The other had massive loss of life.

Both situations are tragic. Both suck. In both cases, there is sympathy for victims. But other than those broad generalities, they aren't comparable at all. I don't think if FEMA responds well in Iowa, one can declare it "lessons learned." Similarly, one can't look at the way Iowans are helping each other and use that as condemnation of what was happening in New Orleans.

 

Um, clearly, I'm not the only one thinking some people on this thread are making it about race.

 

This was a VERY well said post by Brian. In the years since Katrina, it's become obvious that it's going to become the benchmark disaster that all evacuations and responses are going to be measured against. That's really unfortunate, because Katrina was a very unique disaster for the reasons that Brian spelled out very well. He's also exactly right about FEMA and the responses of the people in Iowa and New Orleans.

It's pretty obvious reading this thread that save for a few people who lived through it or have family/friends that lived through it most people don't understand just how destructive Katrina was and what a unique disaster it was. Unfortunately, that's the case around the country. Like I mentioned earlier, I was in California for the wildfires and people were congratulating themselves for how well the response went compared to Katrina. But there was just no comparison in terms of the destruction - most of the region was functioning normally - and hence the response. I just wish more people understood how unique a disaster Katrina was before they compared other disasters and the responses to them to Katrina and the response to it.

 

On second thought...they are fully different. Stepping back and looking at it, Katrina was far, FAR worse than Iowa. I won't edit my previous post but I won't stand by the sum of it any further, either.

While the Iowa cities affected didn't have much time to prepare, there was also this sharp difference: In New Orleans, you only had a few options to get out of town. In Iowa, you still had plenty of roads and highways to take you to higher land. I'm not sure about New Orleans and whether you NEED to have a car/truck for your daily life but in Iowa you pretty much do. That may have made a difference in getting people out.

Both situations are devastating. For those who had to live through Katrina...I definitely "stand down". Your experience is far worse than what I'm seeing.