Well, I’ve been off work for two weeks now. I wanted to get some more blogging time in, but somehow I’ve been writing less and my reader is still just under 300 unread items. Curses, foiled again.

*twirls mustache*

Damn, is it time to wax again already?

So… busybusybusy. I’ve applied for a couple graphic designer positions here in town. The whole month of June, Rocky had percussion lessons every day 3-4pm and his regular drum lessons every Wednesday so I had literally hours of taxi-ing around to do. I’ve managed to keep the boys from killing each other somehow. I’ve been out almost every day taking pictures. I spent a couple days making party favors for a wedding. A few days were wasted flat on my back watching DVDs while I was trying to mend. So while I’m frustrated that I haven’t accomplished as much in the last 14 business days as I wanted to, at least I can kind of account for my time, I s’pose.

I spent some time down at The Mission of Hope where Hunky gets paid for 20 hours a week then volunteers another 20-30 more hours past that. Yesterday I helped make tuna noodle casserole for about 75 people.

Our church set up free daycare to help people who have nowhere to take their children while they clean out their flooded home or had their daycare provider wiped out by the flood. Today I spent my day in a roomful of three and four year olds. O my dear Lord, I forgot… I forgot the potty-ing, and the snot, and the apple juice and the food at least every two hours, and the squealing and crying and whining and kicking. I forgot the pretend tea, the wet kisses, the unbridled joy of a belly laugh; the relief of smiling down at a sweetly (finally!!) sleeping angel passed out on your chest. Still… on the way home I almost stopped at the urologist who did Hunky’s vasectomy and kissed him full on the mouth.

I have manymanymany pictures of the flood aftermath to share with ya’ll. I’ll be putting up a few every day for awhile and telling you a little bit about them. Depressing? Most. Necessary? I think so. Nature’s ability to completely blow your mind? You’ll see. Pictures are decidedly not shiny happy shit or flowers pretty as a princess, but it’ll make you stop and think, and most important, count your blessings.

Some of these shots really do live up to the old adage “A picture’s worth a thousand words,” but you really can’t understand the devastation unless you’re here, seeing block after block of ruined homes with huge piles of house contents out front, smelling the moldy sourness, hearing the eerie silence of an abandoned neighborhood, feeling deep puddles of sand shift under your feet where there was once clean sidewalk. I’m attempting to bring a little bit of this to you. Hell, even as I’m immersed in it, I can’t quite wrap my brain all the way around this disaster. I am even contemplating taking more short video in an attempt to communicate more effectively to you the intensity of the experience. So maybe you go on a little motorcycle ride with HunkyDory in a couple days. I take bribes. Tens and twenties, please.

I’m a little ashamed to say I haven’t taken the opportunity to help clean out a flooded home. I’ve volunteered for flood victims, but I haven’t personally had to hold someone up as they weep over priceless family heirlooms and photos. For every picture, there’s real people completely devastated, but doing their best to keep on. There’s a neighbor helping another neighbor carry heavy ruined furniture to the curb. There’s a real person using their own money and time to take their grill to the middle of a ravaged section of town to cook up free hot dogs and hamburgers for weary people working to bring some semblance of normalcy back. There’s Missions that double their hours and volunteers to serve the flood victims with hot meals and ice cold water, encouragement and prayer, clothes and even a warm bed when the hotel says they can’t rent anymore due to previously booked events. There’s small children who can’t understand why their routine is shattered or why they can’t see their daycare person every day or why they can’t just go back home. There’s real people pissed off because someone is driving through their neighborhood to gawk but not doing anything to help them. There’s people working to get victims’ pets back to them after rescuing them with a boat. There’s senior citizens that went without help because service organizations were underwater. There’s people who have lost their home, and when they try to get an apartment, they find that if they don’t hand over security deposit plus first month’s rent right that very moment, they will lose that opportunity. Or worse, that rent has risen 25% not because of improvements done or repairs made, but simply because the market can take it due to supply vs. demand.

Please, please go to www.corridorrecovery.org to see how you can help, no matter where you’re from. These are all real people with real ruined homes, businesses, and lives that will appreciate your help more than you can possibly know. Their need doesn’t go away with the headlines.

This round of pics was taken 06-19-08, just a few days after the flood surged then receded. Downtown had services rolling in from all over the country to get businesses cleaned and dried out. People had just begun being let back into their neighborhoods to start recovery.

 

Disaster recovery businesses are coming from many different states,
due to the volume of service that is needed surpasses the amount of service
that local businesses can provide. 

At this point, the power hadn’t been restored and no traffic lights were working.
This meant that every single intersection had to be treated like a four way stop
which suuuUUUuuucked since downtown you can’t go more than a block
without meeting a traffic light.

Click through to hover for note

Debris is EVERYWHERE

The force of the currant broke this glass on the lamp of the courthouse steps

The current broke this concrete…

…and then sucked it underneath

Huge dumpsters, caution tape, and windows boarded with plywood line almost every street

This is my friend ‘Big Bird’. They call him that because he’s 6’5″. He almost had to tiptoe to show you the water line on Smulekoff’s building.

Yet another distressing example of “um, that don’t s’pose to be there”

You can’t tell very well from this pic, but
the wall is caved in, the window glass is broken, and window frame is bent.

Shit.

The roof of someone’s shed in the backyard of a downtown business

An underground gas storage tank busted up through the concrete

Click through and check out the note

Everything’s got to be hauled out to the curb for the city to pick up and dispose of
or there will be a strong fine for the city to clean out the building.
That goes for residential buildings, too.

Pontoon boat in someone’s front yard

A deck out on the sidewalk and slimy appliances that are now worthless.
Hunky and Bird talking about our friend that owns the property we’re next to.

Here’s the whole set. I’ve typed out a bunch of html to present the pics like I did above, and to save some time, I think I’ll just link to the set next time and then you click through. Then you can see the notes I’ve added, so, Bonus Plan, baby. Whaddya say? Is it worth the trouble to save me a couple hours of a buttload of copying and pasting urls and typing out some html? Let me know. I want to do whatever it takes for you to see these pics.

Finally, again, please go to www.corridorrecovery.org to see how you can help. As of this moment, while I’m about to publish this post, the site is undergoing some routine maintenance but I’m sure it’ll be up again ASAP. If you get the error, please go check again a little later.

On behalf of a whole bunch of Cedar Rapidians… Thank You.

Last Tuesday (6/10), we started hearing the flood warnings.

Last Wednesday (6/11), I had to take a bunch of detours to get to work and they started evacuating people. Right after work, we were sitting outside my house and talking about the flood warning; wondering how bad it would get. The forecast was that it would be worse than the flood in 1993. Then 3 fire trucks, 12 cop cars, a huge mobile command center, and 10 Nat’l Guard humvees flew by.

Thursday (6/12), roads were closed all over the place and I called into work because I couldn’t figure out a route to get there. We went downtown around 11 and the water was rising rapidly. We went to try to run a couple errands and came back around 1pm. The corner I had been standing on at 11 was covered and the water’s edge was about 20 feet farther up the street. There were lots of people downtown, many sandbagging, but most just there to see the water. There were a few of us with cameras. We went into a parkade and then up into the skywalks so I could take pictures. Then we came back down and we went to that same initial spot and the water’s edge had moved several more feet. The Nat’l Guard came in and started clearing the area that evening.

How do you forget you parked your car in a flood?

This is our DHS office

Corner of 3rd St SE and 4th Av – there’s monthly parking available, hurry up and
get your sticker! That’s an electrical thingy hanging open there.

See how strong the flood current was

We saw quite a few boats come through as people were
checking out their businesses and making sure everyone was out safely

Anybody missing an office chair?

I used to work here a looong time ago. It’s the old MCI 323 building.
They were trying to pump out the water and had to abandon the building quickly,
probably because the waters were rising much faster than anticipated.

No parking here, don’t even think about it

The Paramount Theatre

The bus station

Notice how close the water is to the 7′ Clearance sign.
Anybody missing an end table?

Obviously the Freedom Festival is canceled this year

Helicopters kept us up to speed through the week
with aerial views to show progress of water level

The water was moving so fast, these barrels marked the water’s edge maybe an hour before

We were standing on that corner two hours earlier.
If you’re thinking, what corner, click and see the note in flickr

The railings almost covered by our court house

Hunky surveying the damage

Wave to Mah Kizzle

The Nat’l Guard rolls in and starts upping security

Yes, it’s me for a change. Rarely am I on the other end of the camera.
Hunky was all, what do I do? and I was all, push the damn button.

Here’s the whole set from that day – I figured out ‘add note’ so if you hover over a photo, you might see a note.

Friday (6/13), the water surged. A whole bunch of workplaces closed, including mine.They had the whole perimeter blocked off, and cops and Nat’l Guard at each barricade. Since security was as high as the water, the only pictures I could get were off I-380 or from in front of barricades.

Traffic SuuUUuuckedLaw enforcement declared that the third lane was for emergency personnel only, so of course, you had the village idiots using that lane when they ran out of Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. And people were unnecessarily going 20mph in a 60mph zone so they could gawk. Which is fine when you’re trying to take pictures for blog fodder, but infuriating when it’s 5:55am, you’re almost late to work, and you haven’t had your Mt Dew yet.

Quaker Oats underwater

That ain’t right

I didn’t realize this until I saw another picture from the other side,
but those are a whole bunch of houseboats from Ellis bunched up against the bridge

Rescue boats

WOW.

Off the highway, couldn’t get very close. Thank you, telephoto lens.

Residential neighborhood underwater

J Street

Oh, not good, not good at all. Yikes.

Aw, man, Chappy’s Safari. I loved that bar.

Oh, Dairy Queen.

Now the railings of the court house are covered

The Crunch Berry Tree

A friend’s house in the Rompot neighborhood

I want to share some pics from the St. Louis weekend, but a little more pressing is the flooding here in Cedar Rapids.

Me and Mah Kizzle ventured down just a little ways from my house to near Czech Village, one of two areas in Cedar Rapids under immediate danger, the other being Ellis Blvd.

12th Av from McCarthy

looking towards Czech Village from 8th Av

8th Av and maybe 3rd?

looking towards Cedar River downtown

Then on the way back home, we were chancing some of the flooded streets because we were all brave in the truck and I got all wet as we went through one intersection and I couldn’t get the window up in time. :)

Rip it, roll it, and punch it, dude. Further updates as events warrant.