And A River Runs Through It

I’m no stranger to flooding. I come from Southeast Iowa where floods are a regular event. The thing about it is, the flooding where I’m from typically hits the town of Alexandria, Missouri…A total shithole of a town that is overrun with retards that don’t have sense to move away from a floodplain.
Across the river in Iowa, we usually had to contend with the riverfront spilling over into Victory Park, that is until the flood of ’93 when the ramps to bridges were suddenly underwater and other thoroughfares were breached. It isolated many people and, yes, a few homes were impacted. We thought, and the experts told us, that it was a bad flood.
I was working in radio then, and I remember for at least a week or more the flood was all we talked about. Music was replaced by cancellations and pleas for volunteers. I lived in a third floor apartment at the time, so my shit stayed dry and I began to get sick of talking about it all. Again, most of the impact occurred across the river in Illinois in small towns that were accustomed to floods. The difference that year was that everything was higher and more widespread.
Fifteen years later, I’m in a much larger town with a much smaller river cutting through the middle of it. The Cedar River is not like the Mississippi where I grew up; it’s a small stream by comparison, about a third of the size in width. But the flood that’s happening here now has managed to produce enough water flow to create a Mississippi river flood. The problem is: the Cedar River is not the Mississippi River. And when you try to put the amount of water that would flood the Mississippi into our small little Cedar River, you get major problems.
On Wednesday night, I drove home from work on the interstate over the Cedar River and looked at the water flow. Our courthouse is built on an island in the middle of the river and there are about six bridges that span it, east to west, all of them teaming with traffic and spectators looking at the rising water. At that time, the water was about two feet below the top of the bridge span.
By the next morning, the water was flowing over the bridges.
It was also flowing throughout the downtown area.
The picture above was taken from one of the skywalks at about 9:00 am on Thursday morning. It’s twelve hours later now, and the river has yet to crest. The first floors of our city’s tallest buildings are underwater. Some of the most notable older architecture is also impacted; the beautiful Paramount Theatre is filled with river water. There are rapids, no pun intended, that are running through the streets of the downtown.
And Cedar Rapids is not built on a floodplain, at least not on a floodplain that they’ve seen before. This flood is already over ten feet higher than flood stage…and it’s getting higher.
I’m in the Northeast suburbs, well away from the river, and the only thing that is really affecting me (so far) is there are only two roads that can carry traffic to the Northeast side. Those who live near downtown not only have to contend with the water, but there is no power either.
The only thing I’m contending with is no internet (I’m currently stealing from someone’s unsecured network).
I’m totally worried about losing power because, if the power goes, then my sump pump goes. It’s going on non-stop, pushing back the saturated groundwater from entering into my basement. The basement, by the way, is where all of my man shit is: the guitars, the drum set, the stereo, the TV, the music. If the power fails, the water will creep into the basement and ruin my shit. My neighbor bought a generator tonight for added security and I immediately thought that I should do the same thing.
But I really haven’t budgeted for a fucking generator right now, if you know what I mean.
We’re fine, some of our friends and coworkers are not, and the rain keeps coming. Seriously, I have never seen a stranger weather pattern than what we’ve had for the past twelve months. I feel like punching anyone who disputes global warming, or the obvious fact that there is some strange shit going on with our climate and I’m positive that we’ve had some impact in that.
“Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time…For y’all have knocked her up”