Just got off the phone with my sister... god. She lives in Iowa City (in the way southeastern corner of Iowa, way far away from where the BNI is traveling tomorrow). Iowa City is a mess (that's her picture), per good chunks of central and southeastern Iowa. The news has been reporting mostly on Cedar Rapids, but as she says, Iowa City is down river from Cedar Rapids... People are actually calling this the "Once in 500 years flood" - - it's about 10 feet higher than everything Iowa has dealt with ...ever.
My sister works in museums (see below)... They could have started moving pieces of art as early as Monday, but weren't given the go ahead until Thursday. She's heartbroken. And mad. And astounded. It's surreal and weird and traffic is horrible and the one grocery store that everyone can get to in Iowa City was being cleared out ("..it was just like on a news cast," she said, "We waited in the check out line a long time, and we got our stuff... and since it's Iowa, everyone was very nice...")
I guess there's two bridges that have collapsed in Cedar Rapids ("one FEMA collapsed... They thought they could save it by placing huge amounts of weight on it..")
*****Here's the email she sent...
Hello all. I almost never write bulk emails, let alone email in general, but this is too big. Since you are my friends (and relative) who have worked in museums, you will be able to understand what I just went through.
... The Iowa River has been flooding for a while, but had been controlled to flood the City Park, which is about 1/2 mile from the museum. ...
On Thursday after I got off work at my other job, I saw semis at the Art Museum, so I called the museum to see if I could help. I arrived at to find that printstorage had been evacuated, same with most everything on display, plus the most valuable pieces. But when I went to help in Main Storage, there was still so much there!!! A crew ... was helping wrap pieces, and one of them told me that the latest estimate for flooding was that it would be chest height in Main Storage!! I later checked out a window on the river-side to see that the 4 foot sandbag wall next to the museum was started to fill, and gallery that was below ground level was started to flood.
A few of us wrapped around seventy drawers of jade, pre-colombian, native america, and persian ceramics until one a.m. and we were told that we'd have until 5:00 pm on Friday until we were forced to leave. I called in sick to my other job, and arrived at the museum on Friday at 6:30 am, just after my boss. There was just three of us in the museum at the time, but [another crew] was on their way.
Shortly after arriving (ten minutes, tops) we were informed the 5:00 pm evacuation time was being moved up, and we had only ONE HOUR to vacate the building, i.e. the police would force us out and their own locks on all the doors.
My seventy drawers were sitting on the floor of a gallery, and I knew that they'd never make it onto a truck. So I just did what I could, I started running them up to the one gallery in the museum that's higher than ground level. At that point the [another crew] arrived, with about 8 guys ... that were very used to heavy lifting and they took over that job.
I then ran to Main Storage, to find a few people moving objects, but nothing was being done with all the paintings left on the racks! At this point we had maybe 10 minutes left, so I just started grabbing any painting I could handle and rehanging it as high as I could. Unfortunetly, most the paintings the museum owns are mid-century (very big) I was was only able to move up maybe 10 of them. At that point I started to just take any object and move it higher, including a oceanic wooden sculpture, but couldn't get to the Roman stone heads, because at that point (about 7:45am) the police forced us to leave. We grabbed the art that was staged in the loading dock and threw it into a truck, but weren't able to get the art staged in the next room.
It was one of the most heart-breaking moments of my life. We were all trying to keep it together, especially we were then sent to help with the Johnson County Historical Society's evacuation, but when I finally got home after that I was a mess. We live just up the hill from the Art Museum, and so when I got back to my house around 1:00pm I could see that water was already up to the loading dock. When [my husband] got home around 3:00, the water was at least 10 inches higher. The museum's alarm system continues to go off and I could hear it into the night.
So now all bridges over the Iowa River are closed, and [he] and I have only one route out of our neighborhood. News helicopters are flying overhead constantly, and we've heard we might lose power and water, and at that point we'll just leave town.
Thanks for listening.
*******************************
Aghh... I'm not worried about her and her husband (they're smart, and safe, and their house is on an Iowa City high point)... but I'd much rather she didn't have to go through this. :( There's also not much I could do - - my sister's saving pieces of art, and I'm doing game shows about yoda fingers (true). I hope things clear up soon. Corn crops are f'd (my Uncle Craig, a corn and soybean farmer in Ponca NE hasn't been able to plant yet... everything should have been planted about three weeks ago) Not cool.
NE Nebraska, NW Iowa & SW Minnesota sound fine for travel, and so I and some lovely people are off to Norfolk NE for a week. That may be a very long time in Norfolk NE.
It's just poor central and southeastern Iowa that need a break.
Onward.
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