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Hardship Hits the Midwest – But At What Price?
By April Anderson, New York
Walking through New York's bustling Penn Station on my way to work, I called my sister, Mary, a Global Health student at the University of Iowa to see how she was coping with getting to her summer classes at the University of Iowa with all the flooding. I pictured my 20 year old sister undaunted by the thunder storms but absolutely drenched.
I could barely hear her voice above the crowd noise during the morning rush-hour.
"I had to move out of my summer dorm because of the water. And of course, I'm worried about the water rising more, but mainly, I'm just scared that the dam holding the river will break."
"Memories disappeared - the little shop where I bought my boyfriend’s birthday cake, destroyed; the pizza joint where my roommate and I celebrated the end of finals, destroyed; the Hardee's where my friend Alex and I ate almost every afternoon at the end of last term, destroyed. What had been one of Iowa City's cleanest and most productive strips was now nothing but a wasteland." -April Anderson
Not being able to cross the river should the dam break and sweep away many of the city's bridges would mean Mary would have no place to sleep other than on the floor of the biotech research building, the hospital or in one of the labs on Science Hill.
"The thought of being cut off is frightening," she said. I imagined Iowa's grocery and discount stores also flooded with people stocking up on bottled water and non-perishables, trying to carry on with their lives as usual. Like Mary, a confirmed Iowan, mostly everyone was ready to face more drenching rains, but not prepared to be isolated.
I remember the heavy rainstorms when we followed the Mississippi on our way from Arkansas to our new home in Iowa 15 years ago. The flood waters rose on both sides of the two-lane highway - standing water in the ditches to the edge of the gravel road made travel a challenge without hydroplaning.
Without cell phones or the internet then, Iowans stood in line for fresh water, braved the flooded highways with tractors, and went to the local swimming pools for showers. But we survived the Great Flood of 1993 remembering the daily tap-tap on the metal roof as daily tabulations of rainfall - 2 inches, 3.5 inches, 5 inches more inches fell seemingly without end. The wells were contaminated and drinking water had to be purchased.
We quickly learned Iowans suffer from extravagance: shockingly beautiful skies, deadly unpredictable tornadoes, abundant hungry wildlife, life-threatening cold, record-setting floods, and an irrepressible attitude.
"April, it's busier with school closed than it was with it open," Mary sighs, sounding tired on the other end of my cell phone. Classes had been cancelled for a week in June so that students could help local business people and National Guardsman prepare sandbags in Iowa City. Iowa's bridges and dams were not constructed to withstand more water, but Iowa's community networks were striving to defy structure.
But sandbagging was only part of the drill for Mary. "We helped several of our friends move out of [their] basement and first floor apartments in Iowa City. We made sure they had people to stay with."
There are a lot of Marys in Iowa: Of the 30,000 people displaced, only 500 made it into Iowa shelters. And even though passenger and freight trains were forced to a halt, Iowa kept its major airports open.
Iowa is no Wall Street but its cornfields are multiple gambles, hedged only by the timing of when fields are planted and also the weather. In 1993, floodwaters caused prices to rise on already planted fields of corn and soybeans. This year, many fields weren't planted before the flood waters came.
Driving across the state from Iowa City to my parent's home in Batavia, Mary said that ever single field had been flooded. Iowa corn fuels our car and is a major staple in US diets. With agricultural damage estimated at 3 billion to date, Iowa's fallen cornfields will play a role in our future food prices.
Two weeks after the heavy rains, the water receded to the Mississippi. Mary will go back to school and resume her microbiology lab work and summer classes in all but one building that still retained several feet of water inside. But some things have changed permanently.
A thriving restaurant/shopping district in Iowa City was completely submerged and the buildings along that end of town were empty, completely gutted - windows shattered, doors swung in the breeze, parking lots full of all kinds of debris that had been carried by the flood waters.
"Iowa is no Wall Street but its cornfields are multiple gambles, hedged only by the timing of when fields are planted and also the weather." -April Anderson
Memories disappeared - the little shop where I bought my boyfriend's birthday cake, destroyed; the pizza joint where my roommate and I celebrated the end of finals, destroyed; the Hardee's where my friend Alex and I ate almost every afternoon at the end of last term, destroyed. What had been one of Iowa City's cleanest and most productive strips was now nothing but a wasteland.
Like the lessons learned by the people in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina, Iowans know that this natural disaster, too, shall pass - but at what cost? Food prices are rising dramatically in the grocery stores, and corn on the cob is not likely to be a staple of barbeques this summer. But while the loss was far greater for many Iowans, they learned once again that when things get tough they can count on their neighbors to band together as a community.
