Is Iowa Another Katrina?

Posted by Jill C., Brilliant at Breakfast at 5:58 AM on June 10, 2008.

A good-sized swath of America's heartland is under water, and you'd never know it from reading the newspapers or watching the news. Via Warren Street at Blue Girl, Red State comes this on-the-scene report from Le Grand Orange:

Darrell in Iowa writes:

I am in Mason City.  Our levees broke Sunday morning.  Flood stage is 7 foot and waters are now at 19 feet.  Hundreds of homes and businesses are underwater.  The City's water plant was flooded and the entire city of 30,000 is without potable water.  A couple of hours ago the main electric substation flooded and failed and much of the city is without power.  People remain in flooded homes.  Early tonight I saw people wandering the streets not knowing where to go.  There are entrie areas of the city with NO emergency personnel on hand.

NOBODY from the outside has come to help.  Our local first responders are exhausted and overwhelmed.  Small rural towns downstream tonight are being devasted.  Levees everywhere are failing.  Calls for help in these small towns have been unmet.  Portions of our local guard are in Iraq.

The homeland has been left unprotected and people are suffering horribly.

"Darrell in Iowa"'s updates are here. Obviously someone chastised him for drawing parallels with New Orleans and complaining that the National Guard was not there to help. That seems a shame and uncalled-for. That Iowa was similarly left to fend for itself in no way diminishes what happened to New Orleans three years ago -- a tragedy that continues to this day. This gets back to that unfortunate concept of "a patent on suffering" -- that there is only so much empathy to go around. That our government is letting white communities drown as blithely as it did black communities should tell us that it isn't even about race -- it's about a fundamental contempt for EVERY American not in the Bush Family Circle.

As for the National Guard, complaints that the Guard just isn't there isn't a knock on Our Fearless Troops™ it's a knock on their Commander-in-Chief, who has sent them off to fight in a war based on lies so that he doesn't have to institute a draft.

The fact of the matter remains this: that once again, a section of this country is flooded, and the attitude of the Federal government is "Fuck you...you're on your own." This is what Republican policies look like. This is what making the government so small you could drown it in a bathtub looks like. This is what the domestic consequences of a war fought on the cheap look like. And it isn't over yet:

A dam near the Wisconsin Dells resort area broke on Monday, sweeping away some homes, as torrential rains caused more flooding across parts of the U.S. Midwest, authorities said.

No deaths or injuries were reported, though residents living beside a few rain-swollen rivers in central Wisconsin were urged to evacuate, the Columbia County Sheriff's office said.

The failure of the Delton Dam on Lake Delton caused mudslides that swept away a few homes. The water rushed to form a new tributary to the Wisconsin River, which eventually empties into the Mississippi River.

Police issued a warning about debris swept into rivers from collapsed buildings and roads.

Other dams in the Wisconsin Dells region, which is famous for its scenic lakes and resorts, were also threatened by a series of drenching storms in recent weeks, authorities said.

Gov. Jim Doyle declared a state of emergency in 30 counties in the southern half of Wisconsin. Similar declarations have been made in recent days in Iowa and Indiana, with flooding also affecting parts of Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota.

"This is an area that's been bombarded with rain over the weekend, anywhere from 5 to 10 inches, and you're dealing with saturated soils. So any rain that falls becomes run-off," the National Weather Service's Pat Slattery said.

Nearly one-third of Iowa's 99 counties were experiencing flooding, according to Gov. Chet Culver.

Flood damage estimated in the tens of millions of dollars were being added to recent storm damage in Iowa, including a tornado that flattened the town of Parkersburg two weeks ago.

The water treatment plant Mason City, Iowa, was swamped this weekend by the Winnebago River, three of four bridges in the town of Charles City were swept away by flooding of the Cedar River, and the town of New Hartford was evacuated.

Many corn and soybean acres were under water in Midwestern states, hurting farmers' prospects after a wet spring that had already delayed planting in many places.

Iowa and Illinois alone produce one-third of U.S. corn and soybeans, usually the world's biggest harvests of those crops.

And that's another side note: What happens to the prices of gasoline and meat when the crop used to make ethanol and feedstocks for farm animals are under water? If you think food and gasoline prices are high now, just wait till these shortages work their way through the system. Jimmy Higgins at Fire on the Mountain has some thoughts on this. Photos from yesterday in Cedar Falls, Iowa can be found here. And over at Culture Kitchen, a reminder of just who was laughing and posing with a cake (that was never eaten, just thrown away, like everything -- and everyone -- else used in Republican photo-ops) the last time floods devastated an entire region of the country.

Where is the so-called President? Where is the national media? Is trying to perpetuate the myth that John McCain is a popular, likeable maverick so taxing to the news organizations that they have no time or resources to cover what's happening in our own country?

Tagged as: katrina, iowa, natural disaster