GhaleonEB said:

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Meier said:

It's weird.. here in Chicago, there's absolutely nothing at all even slightly resembling what other parts of the Midwest are getting.

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grandjedi6 said:

Well it helps when you have few floodable rivers and a giant ass Lake that all the water flows into.

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tanod said:

I live in one town that has seen the worst flooding it has EVER seen. The business I work for is completely flooded and ruined all of our files and computers so I had almost all last week off.

At home, we lost our internet and TV signals for all of Tuesday and Wednesday and all of the major roads into and out of town were closed. Apart from the phone, we were totally cut off from the outside world. For a time, we even lost our local channels. Things are still really bad here and there are hundreds of people who have lost everything they own. We were lucky that our house didn't have any flooding but like I said, my work place wasn't as lucky.


There was 5 feet of water in the office and plant at one point. It looks like the Incredible Hulk (just saw that movie) went through every room in the office and threw everything around. At least our company's file server was safe. We had a tape backup off-site too just in case. Thank fucking god for that. There were also 2 or 3 computers that some how managed to stay safe. The server and computers are set up at my bosses house and while we try to get everything squared away, I'll probably be working out of her home.

Management is meeting some time tomorrow to try and figure out what we're going to do. The owner (who lives in France) is flying in next week to assess the situation. We didn't know if we'd be able to get into the plant but starting Friday, people have started to try to salvage some of the files and other things we have in the office.

I drove by the plant with my wife today after seeing the water had come down and saw my boss's car. There was still about 6 inches of water in the parking lot so we drove my car through the water up to where my boss had parked. The first thing I did was give her a hug. She said that she had basically been wandering around the plant, trying to figure out what we're gonna do. Everything is just a mess.

At work, I'll remain on staff because I'm one of their "core people" but a good portion of our 30 employees are getting layed off. We are out of production for at least the next 5-6 months. The manufacturing plant is a total loss and thinking right now is that IF we get back into business, we're going to start at a new location on the other side of town. I'm not even sure if I'm gonna have a job a month from now. I LOVE my job and the people I work with. I have a lot of bills to pay. This couldn't have come at a worse time. This is totally fucking depressing.




At the very least, I am getting to spend some more time with my son since I had all of last week off. He seems to appreciate it.

But still,

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esbern said:

as some who went through the new orleans flood and the aftermath, i hope everyone is alright and good luck to everyone.

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Kauza said:

On a different note, I've just been informed by my friends that the 30 minute trip from Iowa City to the Cedar Rapids airport, which I must make tomorrow, is now going to take 6 hours due to all of the road closures. For those who know the area, after leaving the airport we will now have to go all the way to Waterloo, west all the way to Des Moines, and then back east along I-80 to Iowa City. Absolutely insane.

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Kauza said:

My goodness, how ever did the flood of '93 get you laid?

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MEYER, Ill. - Floodwaters with the potential to swamp 47 square miles breached a levee in western Illinois on Wednesday, adding to the 18 other levees breached or overtopped along the Mississippi River.

The Illinois breach flooded farmland near the hamlet of Meyer, Adams County Emergency Management Agency spokeswoman Julie Shepard said.

Meyer, a town of 40 to 50 people, had to be evacuated, and authorities patrolled the town Wednesday morning to make sure no one was left behind, she said.

Flooding at Meyer could swamp 30,000 acres — or about 47 square miles — in the largely rural area, she said.

The rising river also ran over the tops of eight levees north of St. Louis overnight, bringing the total number of compromised levees on the most important U.S. inland waterway to 19.

"They were lower level agricultural levees," said Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Alan Dooley. "We're also watching another seven levees that may overtop in the next couple of days ... all agricultural levees."

The slow-rolling disaster, the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years, has swamped vast sections of the farm belt and forced tens of thousands of people from their homes.

Flooding that began in eastern Iowa caused at least $1.5 billion in damage as it crept south toward the Mississippi. About 25,000 people in Cedar Rapids were forced from their homes, 19 buildings at the University of Iowa were flooded and water treatment plants in several cities were knocked out.

Later in the week, the Mississippi is expected to threaten a host of others communities, leading officials to consider evacuation plans and begin sandbagging.

In Clarksville — a historic artists' town of 500 between St. Louis and Hannibal, Mo. — National Guard members, inmates and students were sandbagging. Five blocks were already swamped, but volunteers were doing their best to save buildings housing the shops of artisans and craftsmen.

"We fix one thing and it breaks," Mayor Jo Anne Smiley said. "Sewers are plugged up. We have leaks in walls and people who need things. We're boating in food to people."

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cloudwalking said:

is flood insurance not mandatory for people who live on a floodplain in most places in the US? .

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The Experiment said:

No.

I bet a lot more people now are reconsidering their flood insurance status.

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ConsumerSquare said:

Some of you locals correct me if I misheard, but the probability of some of these areas flooding is ridiculously low. Something like .2% probability of flooding in a given year.

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Kansas City Star said:

Officials worry about collapse of animal-waste lagoons at factory farms
By KAREN DILLON
The Kansas City Star

Along the Mississippi River, they’re watching the levees. In northern Missouri, they’re watching the walls of lagoons holding back millions of gallons of animal waste.

Rains this week were filling waste lagoons on industrial farms, and some were leaking and overflowing.

State officials, worried that lagoon walls might collapse, have told farmers that they can lower lagoon levels by spraying the waste on fields, even though the ground was soaked from rainfall.

“All the lagoons are overflowing or right at the edge,” said Karl Fett, regional director of the Department of Natural Resources office in Lee’s Summit. “It is a dire situation.”

Missouri has never faced the failure of so many lagoons and potential contamination of waterways, state officials and environmentalists said. The lagoons were built to collect waste from animals on industrial farms, which have proliferated in Missouri in recent years.

“I have been with the department since 1999, and I haven’t seen anything like this,” said Joe Heafner, a natural resources industrial farm inspector.

Many lagoons are 1 to 3 acres and can be 8 to 15 feet deep. They can contain up to 25 million gallons of animal waste.

More rain was expected to fall Friday night in northern Missouri, which includes Carroll, Daviess, Gentry and Harrison counties.

On Wednesday, the state natural resources department issued a notice to factory farm operators in 20 counties after 8 inches — in some place, more than 11 inches — fell in less than 24 hours.

The notice told operators to begin following emergency management practices to try to prevent lagoons from collapsing. This allows fields to be sprayed with waste.

Normally, operators would spray the waste on dry fields to decrease the chances of the waste getting into waterways.

“I’m not going to deny that it is getting very concerning,” said Derrick Steen, the Department of Natural Resources’ agriculture chief with the water protection program. “The problem is, it has rained a little bit every week, and now the fields are saturated.”

Premium Standard Farms, a major operator of industrial farms, confirmed that waste discharged from lagoons had made its way into a creek and in another instance into a ditch.

The company pledged to work with the state in order to minimize the impact on the environment.

A dispute over factory farms has been ongoing in the state for years because of pollution runoff and odors, but now concerns are heightened.

“This could result in an unprecedented environmental disaster,” said Scott Dye, national director of the Sierra Club’s Water Sentinel program. Several thousand gallons of waste from a lagoon leaked Thursday into a stream that flows through Dye’s family farm near Unionville.

A collapsed lagoon would be even worse, Dye said.

“I have no idea how you clean up 25 million gallons of hog (waste),” he said. “This is exactly why people are opposed to them.”

In the 20 northern counties that received the state warning, 122 industrial operations — mostly hog farms — have been authorized by the state to house thousands of animals under one roof. Numerous smaller factory farms are not tracked by the state.

A recent study by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production found that factory farm animals present a serious and growing threat to humans, animals and the environment. The facilities are harmful because of pollution and the potential for the spread of disease, the report said.

But the Missouri Farm Bureau contends the report focused only on negative aspects of industrial farming, which keeps food abundant and affordable.

Estil Fretwell, communications director for the farm bureau, said the recent rainfall had created a unique situation.

“These are unusual rains and unusual times,” Fretwell said. “Agriculture is really impacted by these rains, and I don’t think this is the time to be coming down on farmers.”

Heafner, who watched this week as operators applied the waste to a flooded field north of Kansas City, called it the lesser of two evils.

“It was flooded, but they didn’t have anywhere else to go with it,” he said.

But opponents of factory farms present few good options.

“The lesser of two evils is not a good argument,” said Bryce Oates, a spokesman for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, which supports family farms. “If the ground is saturated, it doesn’t go into the ground. It runs off and goes into our water systems anyway, and that is not good for anybody in the state.”

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