Is the Iowa flooding going to same devastation like New Orleans?

what do you guys think? it looks very bad according to news report. Iowa governor reported that 55 out of 99 counties were flooded. Rapid City is completely over run with deep water.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/06/13/midwest.flooding.ap/index.html

Different geography. Different attitudes. On a business trip, I flew into Des Moines a few years ago right after a flood (not nearly as bad as this though). When I checked in at the hotel desk, they said the sewage treatment plant had been flooded so the water wasn't safe. Then they issued me four gallons of water and said if I wanted a shower to poke holes in one. These farm hands are going to just wait until the water recedes, then roll up their sleeves. Didn't even seem to notice there was no power.

I'll save the political comentary for another forum. I like hanging around here.

I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and a few nearby towns just under two years ago. I concur with DesertFox's comments. Relatives of my wife live within two miles of the Cedar River, north of Iowa City.

Also, the water in these areas is going to go away in large part without pumping. Things will drain from the area, while NOLA is below sea level.

Even if the flooding was twice as a bad as NO, a month after it is over, the rest of the nation will forget it.

The people are generally much closer knit with strong sense of community. I am from the Waterloo/Cedar Falls area and still have most of my family there. My sisters have been down helping sand bag every night after work, as have many others.

People won't generally be looking for someone to 'blame'. After the '93 flood, they build the levees higher and better - just not enough for a flood of such magnitude. They did what was reasonable and most people will accept that and deal with it.

No.
Here's my take.

1. It's not below sea level, so it will drain. That's a big factor.
2. They CAN evacuate - they have jobs and cars, for the most park.
3. (I can't post 3 here, at least not the way I'd say it at home. Basically, there's a way of thinking about the world that makes a big difference in how you handle adversity).

Re 1 - The amount of drain tile in the surrounding area will play apart in how the city will drain. Its not quite as simple as "it will drain"

Re 2 - From what I've heard/read bridges were closed and I-80 is shut down. The notice to get out of town was given after the bridge was closed.

Cedar rapids is a complete mess, the downtown is flooded to at least the top of the first floor (I've heard that its 32' above the 100 year event).

Midwesterners are a self reliant, close knit group. They'll weather this, and probably come up with some great ideas we've not yet thought of to deal with this.

The thing I find interesting about veiled commentary is that I often attribute the worst possible meaning to it whether that was the comment maker's intent or not. I figure if the person "can't say it here" that it's an unacceptable comment according to the rules of the forum (or polite society HAHA) and I then begin to wonder why there is any need to mention it at all.

Regarding Iowa: My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Iowa, whether they were prepared or not, whether they were caught off guard or not and whatever their general attitudes and beliefs are... These are the same thoughts that I had for the people of New Orleans when they were facing a dark hour.

I think that the people of Iowa, are actually tougher people, who will probably accept it and just do whatever they can to fix it and make sure it doesn't happen again whereas in NO the people just waited for the government instead of doing anything.

I tend to agree with the above, about the resiliency of Midwesterner's, and a different.... work ethic probably isn't the right word, but captures it properly.

Additionally though, Cedar Falls doesn't have nearly a million people to evacuate and shelter. The entire state is essentially a bread-bowl so most can eat, it's a pretty well-confined flood (as opposed to NO where problems were up and down the gulf coast) and they had decent notice to leave.

Neither did Louisiana. Remember, most of the people in New Orleans evacuated ahead of Katrina.


The level of flooding is actually quite a bit higher in Iowa, a dozen feet or more beyond what New Orleans saw, as bad as the worst areas in Alabama or Mississippi during Katrina. The fact that it may drain away more quickly only matters in terms of property damage if you can't hold your breath long enough...

Iowa will be fine. They will need a lot of disaster assistance but their rural/farmer heritage will leave them well equipped to get to work and solve problems once the immediate flooding is over.

The flooding in the mid-west is in an area with mush lower population density. NOLA and parts of the gulf coast were densely populated. The numbers of people affected will be smaller and the area also smaller.

The area outside the flooding are largely unaffected. Travel a quarter mile away from the flooding and things are mostly normal. After Katrina the coast was devastated and the are for a hundred miles inland damaged. People inland had to save themselves before they could help those on the coast.

The average income of the mid-westerner is much higher than that in NOLA, one of the poorest areas in the US.

The mod-west is politically important in the upcoming election cycle. Federal aid will be swift and sure. The federal government will not be keeping rescuers and aid away from the people in trouble. FEMA simply failed to act in NOLA. Worse than that it actively worked at keeping rescuers and aid out of NOLA after Katrina. This aggressive let-them-eat-cake attitude was made possible because the PTB were of a different party than the locals and the gulf coast was not seen as politically important.

The flooding is terrible but help is on the way and the people are, on average, better off than the worse hit areas after Katrina. Expect to see the area rebuild rapidly.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

There were politically important areas hit by Katrina too; remember that the worst of the storm took place east of Louisiana in PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. areas, and these did little better via FEMA. Also, "actively keeping rescuers out of NOLA" was the work of the state, which had control over access, not FEMA, which never had say in such things (roadblocks were the work of state police reporting to Gov. Blanco, not federal agents).

Perhaps the worst was the local politics: FEMA was afraid to send any money into NOLA for fear it would be stolen. That wasn't just FEMA; a friend of mine owns a structural engineering business and refused absolutely to do any work in Louisiana due to the corruption there (he'd almost gone bankrupt once before not to knowing who to pay etc). That won't be a problem in Iowa. Lesson: know who you elect! ... which may be why everyone who could got out of NOLA ahead of time.