Colleen's letter about the Iowa Floods
Colleen's was one of my coworkers while I worked for Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids. Nate is Colleen's boyfriend and fellow ex-coworker at Rockwell. Steve Adam's is another ex-coworker.
6/18/2008
Hi, Chris!
Good to hear from you. Things seem to be on the mend. It's rather awesome to see how things can be so devistated in one area, and then just a short distance away, life can be seemingly unaffected.
Nate had some water in his basement. It was only about 4 inches at it's worst, and it only was that high for about 1 day - it drained out all on its own. He also lost his power for 3 days. The worst part of it is that he has to throw out all of the stinky food that was in his freezer and fridge (very stinky). Now that power is restored, we are able to get the dehumidifier up and running. The basement is mostly unfinished, so that helps a lot. Hopefully there are no mold/mildew issues that need to be addressed, but we won't know for sure for another couple of days (stinky freezer is masking any mildew odors that may be there).
My house was basically unaffected - I've had some mild water issues all spring due to the saturated ground and the massive amounts of melting snow and rain that we've had, so there is nothing new to deal with.
The worst of it is that the city water production capabilities are at about 50% - everyone is asked to conserve water, which really isn't a bad idea anyway. And also traffic was terrible since I-380 was the only way of crossing the river - it was taking > 1 hour to get from this side (work) to the other side (Nate's house). I think they opened that back up so that will help a lot.
Pretty much everyone seems to be back up and coming in to work. I don't actually know anybody that lives in the "affected areas" with water on the main floor like they are showing on TV. I can't even imagine how they are coping. I wasn't able to get out and help with the sandbagging pre-floods (not that it ended up working anyway), but now that the water is receding, I'm hoping to get down and help clean up some of the mess that was left. Steve Adams has been doing a lot of good works helping clean up Mercy Hospital - he's got some scary stories.
6/18/2008
Hi, Chris!
Good to hear from you. Things seem to be on the mend. It's rather awesome to see how things can be so devistated in one area, and then just a short distance away, life can be seemingly unaffected.
Nate had some water in his basement. It was only about 4 inches at it's worst, and it only was that high for about 1 day - it drained out all on its own. He also lost his power for 3 days. The worst part of it is that he has to throw out all of the stinky food that was in his freezer and fridge (very stinky). Now that power is restored, we are able to get the dehumidifier up and running. The basement is mostly unfinished, so that helps a lot. Hopefully there are no mold/mildew issues that need to be addressed, but we won't know for sure for another couple of days (stinky freezer is masking any mildew odors that may be there).
My house was basically unaffected - I've had some mild water issues all spring due to the saturated ground and the massive amounts of melting snow and rain that we've had, so there is nothing new to deal with.
The worst of it is that the city water production capabilities are at about 50% - everyone is asked to conserve water, which really isn't a bad idea anyway. And also traffic was terrible since I-380 was the only way of crossing the river - it was taking > 1 hour to get from this side (work) to the other side (Nate's house). I think they opened that back up so that will help a lot.
Pretty much everyone seems to be back up and coming in to work. I don't actually know anybody that lives in the "affected areas" with water on the main floor like they are showing on TV. I can't even imagine how they are coping. I wasn't able to get out and help with the sandbagging pre-floods (not that it ended up working anyway), but now that the water is receding, I'm hoping to get down and help clean up some of the mess that was left. Steve Adams has been doing a lot of good works helping clean up Mercy Hospital - he's got some scary stories.