After

After work today I went around on the bike with my camera to get a sense of downtown after the flood; even though the water remains very very high, the river has fallen nearly 10 feet since yesterday, and the bridges reopened this morning. Some of them; Park and 6th street may be out of commission for a while, and the railroad bridge?


You can see what the force of the water did to the rail itself:


The river broke the bridge in two:


On Tuesday the rumor was that the broken half travelled down river and took out the 11th street bridge as well, but this didn't happen. The east side did nearly flood as a result of the breach the bridge made in the levee wall, which volunteers from all over the city secured with very hard work:


Sandbags also saved the Fairview cemetery, where the flood waters attempted to end run the dikes. That cast iron fence there in the bottom ? It's nearly ten feet off the ground in most places. The water just two days ago exposed only its very tips. If the river had sneaked through here, the east side would have been deluged:


The old boat house across the hill from the cemetery did not survive, though. On Tuesday, it was completely submerged and collapsed:


Tireless efforts by Waterloo citizens filling and deploying sandbags all over the city prevented even more damage than we suffered; no doubt these efforts spared us the difficult circumstances that the people of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City face. You can only pray for them, and wonder why some, and not others.

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