Legalectric

I heard a report that something like 1/3 of Iowa is underwater. Can it be?

Here’s an update from Paul Fried who is in the zone:

A brief note/update for friends, relatives, neighbors:
We’ve been in the Washburn/Gilbertville Iowa area since Sunday morning. My mother-in-law’s basement had about 5 feet of water. The water has receeded, we’ve swept and shoveled water and mud, carried out furniture, boxes, wet carpeting, wood doors and debris. Some family members have been working to dry documents, slides and family films. We’re power-washing, and very tired when we go to bed at night. An electrician came and restored electricity today. It may be a while before we can drink city water again, but there’s plenty of bottled water for now. People have been kind. An Iowa foodshelf truck came by to drop off water, crackers and
pop-tarts. Life is good.
– Paul

And Christine Ziebold, M.D., remember her — co-author of this report:

Ex. 2 – Price of Pollution

Here’s a photo she took down in Iowa City, where she’s living now, this is the University of Iowa Burlington Ave Power Plant, all sandbagged:

And a large part of the population of Iowa City sandbagging to save campus buildings:

Iowa’s getting organized. If you’re interested in helping, they need it all, from trucking stuff around to website & data entry to animal feeding to meal delivery to medical care to doing laundry:

www.2008flood.org

Their Animal Shelters have moved to larger facilities to serve the animals:

Cedar Rapids Emergency Animal Shelter – Kirkwood Community College

Iowa City Pet Shelter – at Johnson County Fairgrounds

From Daily Kos, a reminder of how fragile it all is, and an argument for distributed generation of all sorts, decentrailzation:

How a Midwest Flood Can Drag Down a Nation

It’s all connected. As a truckdriver, I knew how vulnerable this country is, how dependent on the I-80 link between the costs, without it, the whole country would starve.