Anyone see a guy with a robe followed by animals in pairs??

June 22, 2008
Anyone see a guy with a robe followed by animals in pairs??

After thinking about the historic events that have occurred here the past two weeks, I felt like I needed to write it up and share these stories with our friends and family. I was thinking that we often see major catastrophes in the news, but we don’t often here of the aftermath and recovery efforts. I read an article recently that tells a bit of what happened here:

“...But the catastrophic flooding in the eastern half, near Iowa City, is of a numbing magnitude. It's a mini-New Orleans, over 400 blocks under water in Cedar Rapids, the small city we all fly into on road trips to Iowa City. This was a town on the rebound. It was a resurgent downtown where new restaurants were springing up and people were regaining an economic foothold.

But the Cedar River had other plans. Fed by torrential rains throughout the spring, the river was swollen already when a nearly stalled weather front all but parked over the area the last several days and dumped inch after inch of rain on the town and up the watershed in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

The floods surrounding the Mississippi 15 years ago were bad enough. That time, the Cedar crested at 19 feet, nine above flood stage. This is much worse. It was already at 31 feet on the evening of Friday the 13th, when the river was supposed to start subsiding. Instead, it's predicted to hit 33. The Cedar Rapids event is of a 500-year-flood-plain variety, though. There is no plan for something like this...

None of that will help the people with homes or businesses 8-10 blocks on either side of the Cedar. They're all under feet of acrid, diesel-smelling brown soup. People's jobs will be swallowed up. The Quaker Oats plant, employer to hundreds, is inundated completely on its first floor.”

Now, up here in Marion, only a few miles away, you cannot tell that there ever was a flood. Yes, our park was completely under water, we had water restrictions (using water for drinking only) for a few days, and some lost power and the internet for a few hours. That is nothing compared to what happened south of us.

We got our first up close look on Thursday. We were part of a crew that went to help a family with their home. We have different crews from the Stake going out every day to do different projects. This couple was an older couple who had kept everything they were saving down in their basement. The husband had already fallen down the slick, mossy steps and gotten hurt. The wife had just been released 2 days earlier from the hospital after having open-heart surgery a few weeks ago. At first, as we drove down, there didn’t appear to be much damage. But as we got closer we were shocked at how much damage a raging flood can cause. There were hundreds of people piling up all their belongings on the curbs to go out with the trash: baby cribs, couches, mattresses, dressers, etc. It is one of the saddest things I have ever seen. The river must have been powerful as it swept through the city. We saw chairs in the middle of nowhere, couches upside down against trees and even a purse stuck up in a tree (Tyler thought that was hilarious!)

So, we helped carry all the items out of their basement, shed, and garage. Everything was ruined and dripping in mud and filth. I was even sad throwing old cookbooks they had saved, audio tapes, pictures, and family files into the trash. I would have just died if that had been me. But do you want to know the amazing part? They were so friendly and...happy! The wife was telling us how grateful she was for our help, how grateful they were that only the bottom half of their home had been damaged, and especially that all their family members got out safe. The funniest thing though, was when I found a book dripping in mud, and found that it was titled “How to clean practically anything”. That was hilarious!!! Anyway, it was a great experience. We took Marisa, Kayla, and Tyler and all wore our bright yellow “Mormon Helping Hands” t-shirts, masks, boots, etc. (I need to get a picture) Marisa was asked to speak about her experience in church today and did a great job.

Church the last 2 weeks has been spent organizing the churches efforts and teams for the clean up and rebuilding of our city. We already have people calling in asking if they can get help from “those yellow shirt people”. We head out tomorrow night to help the 25 families in the southern part of our stake who lost all or part of their homes in the flood. (I don’t know how it went up North) We hope as a giant FHE team we can help them get a lot of the work done. We can no longer take anyone younger than 12. They have had 1300 people in the ER this week with respiratory illness. Obviously the mold is getting out of control and the muddy waters are like a bacteria soup so we have to be very careful. But our kids will be helping distribute water and supplies. The youth are making all the food on Tuesday to feed the families still in the middle school shelter.

Anyway, I know most of you are very busy, but I will attach a link of amazing pictures here so you can see what happened. Our CR library was hit hard. Almost the entire adult books and reference books are gone. Our main live theater in town is totally damaged losing thousands of dollars in costumes, the YMCA got over 7 ½ feet of water inside and lost the ENTIRE first floor including bball courts, racquetball courts and the pool. It was all brand new. Our historic bridge collapsed with several rail cars on it. The Quaker Oats facility is a disaster and the entire first floor of our hospital was lost also ruining all the x-ray, MRI, and cat scan equipment. Over 7,000 people lost their jobs. This will be a long term effort. I will try to keep you updated weekly on the progress we are making. I have never seen so many people helping out everyone. It is a touching sight to behold. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers and for checking to make sure we didn’t wash away.

http://www.andrealynnphoto.com/CRflood2008/