[Oe List ...] Iowa Weather

Sat Jun 14 01:08:04 EDT 2008

Here in the middle of the state every day is its own challenge.  Right now from north of Des Moines I could not get to my brother's home south of Des Moines if I wanted to try.  Two weeks ago I barely made it home from work on Monday morning and last Monday I could not get to the folks (and they are only ten miles away).  The flooding is so pervasive that it is impossible to know where you cannot go next.  I have dumped twelve inches from my rain gauge in the last ten days. Dad and Dorothy have had three more inches than I have had.  I am fortunate to have relocated since I moved out here.  At my first location there is more than five feet of water over the drive.  The back half of my current lawn looks like a field pond, but the crawl space under my house is dry.  The new drainage we put in at the Mackey church last year has kept the basement dry this season.  My home church--just two blocks from my house has had the basement flooded.

The tornados have been devastating, heartbreaking.  It is difficult to sit 
under the threat night after night, or day after day.  After something like 
the loss of the remarkable human beings at the boy scout camp, you wish you 
could trade places.  In Parkersburg the Methodist Church was being used as 
the volunteer meeting place until the heavy rains revealed that the winds 
had so compromised the roof that water poured through into the sanctuary. 
Last Sunday the roof of one of the Methodist churches actually fell 
in--luckily before the congregation gathered.  Volunteers have been drawn into their own crisis.  Today Interstate 80 was closed (the main east-west route across the state).  The Mississippi is closed for over two hundred miles. No barges are carrying grain or anything else to market (so yes, all prices go up).

A part of the struggle is that the randomness of all of this seems to 
reflect at least one dimension of the way life is and that is disturbing, 
causing one to wonder about the point of it all.  Sorry.  I don't mean to be 
a downer, but we need a real break.  Margaret

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: David & Lin Zahrt 
  To: Colleague Dialogue 
  Cc: Order Ecumenical Community 
  Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 7:55 PM
  Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] [Dialogue] Flood Victims

  Out here on the 'West Coast' of Iowa we have only had, in the past two weeks, a total of 7 1/4 inches of rain. We live on the west slope of Iowa's Loess Hills and when we look west out our living room window we see 15 miles across the Missouri River Flood plain to the Missouri River and the Nebraska hills. For the first mile and 1/2 approximately 1/2 of the cropland has standing water. I suspect this land will have no crop this year; either flooded out or unable to plant or re-plant. 

  7 miles south of us, along the hills the Little Sioux Scout Camp experienced a tornado. You must have seen the publicity/news coverage on it. The water in other parts of Iowa has been unprecedented. We have B&B guests who knew people who lived through the tornado in Parkersburg, IA, who subsequently purchased a house in Cedar Falls/Waterloo, IA, and have since had the house flooded out.

  Don't know about Nancy Trask. Maybe we're losing some Covered Bridges in Madison County.

  David

  On Jun 13, 2008, at 4:02 PM, George Holcombe wrote:
    Any news from our Iowa colleagues and others in the flooded areas?

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