CR flood, Friday

Photo intern Courtney Sargent and I were on the early flood shift.. I had been on the west side of town for two days, where residences seem hardest hit, so I handed that side off to Courtney while I began walking the east side of the river. What we encountered was.. a real slowing-down. The river was expected to crest Friday afternoon (and it did, above 31 feet, well above the 20-foot record, and five feet above where it was expected to crest), so now it's mostly a matter of waiting. I climbed to the top of the Mercy Hospital parking garage (four flights of stairs in chest waders is a great workout, by the way) to check out the scene from above, then took the wrong door down and ended up in the hospital, where they were setting up sump pumps to keep the ground floor as dry as possible. The hospital had been evacuated over night.



After getting back to the office and filing, I headed up in GazComm president Chuck Peters' Cessna for a view of the flooding from above. I alternated between being utterly astounded at what I was seeing, and wishing I hadn't eaten such a big breakfast.

Cedar Rapids from above... you can see that all of our bridges are impassible, except the interstate bridge, which is down to two lanes to allow emergency crews through.



Most of Palo is under water.. we have been unable to get there for a couple days now because the roads leading into town are under water. This photo is only one small part of town..


The Iowa River is also flooding right now, and hasn't reached its crest yet. You can see its border snaking through the trees. The farmland and forest near the river have been swallowed by the backwaters as the river nears the Coralville Reservoir.


The reservoir overflowed the spillway earlier this week, meaning there is now no control over its flow. A levee was breached along the Coralville strip Thursday night, leaving the main business district under water.


Iowa City's City Park is right along the river, and is now completely under water. The merry-go-round was a bright spot amidst the muddy floodwater.



I've run out of adjectives.

yesterday's paper...

...was incredible. And I'm not just saying that because my photo ran two pages wide on a two-page wraparound cover.. as I look through yesterday's edition, I continue to be impressed with the work our staff pulled off without power and without being able to get much of anywhere in town with so many road closures. We have emergency generators running the essentials, snails-pace internet allowing us to keep our website up-to-date, and a headlamp hanging in the newsroom for those who venture out to the port-o-potties on the roof of the garage (we're without water, too).



Really. Our staff is producing incredible work, to the point that Friday's paper sold out all over town and had to go for a special reprint. Our new editor started Tuesday, and wrote a column about our efforts as a staff here. We have a long few weeks (months, even) ahead as we continue to cover this story.

Flood prep

Going back in time a bit to Tuesday and Wednesday's preparation for the flood..

I spent Tuesday in Iowa City and Coralville photographing people getting ready for the flood. The river was already at least two feet deep in the backyards of homes on Normandy Drive in Iowa City, but the sandbagging continued, with a lot of help from volunteers. Below, the Iowa City High cross country camp came out to help. I'll probably say this several more times in the course of covering this story, but, I'm so impressed with the generosity of strangers.


At 3:30 a.m., I awoke abruptly to the sound of my work cell ringing. Czech Village was being evacuated due to the rapidly rising water. (For the record, I had been warned that this was a possibility.. but I still went to bed Tuesday hoping it wouldn't happen.) I got to the village within 10 minutes of getting the call, half-dressed but fully awake, and not knowing what to expect at all. Most residents were already gone, due to the urgency of the evacuation. A few stragglers remained, including a few brave souls in trucks much more capable of handling the floodwater than my little Corolla.


These two families were unsure if they were included in the evacuation; while police officers had come to their homes telling them to leave, they still had gas (unlike the houses in the evacuation area), and were on higher ground. These homes are under water now, after a few levees broke on the west side of the river.


I filed three photos by 5:30 a.m., and headed back out to look for more as the sun rose over the village.


The 80-plus year-old facilities manager, left, and owner, right, of the Village Bank and Trust were sandbagging the doors into the bank. Again.. I'm almost certain that this is deep under water now.


I stalked some city streets crews around some dangerous (or soon to be dangerous) intersections, knowing that they would be closing roads soon. A few roads were already closed by this point, making two of the bridges across the river impassable. Now, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 12th and 16th Avenue bridges are all deep under water, leaving us with only the interstate to get across the river.


The Time Check neighborhood is near one of the levees that broke Thursday. I spent time with police officers as they canvassed the neighborhood for the mandatory evacuation, then photographed people beginning to move out. A group of volunteers from a construction company helped move out a couple's refrigerator.


The streets were already above my ankles in some places Wednesday afternoon.


After taking this photo, I walked up to the levee. The next day, I parked 13 blocks from the levee and still had to move my car to get away from flash flooding. I had no idea how bad it would get, and, after flying over the flood zones today, I still can't believe it.

CR flood, Thursday

This is slightly out of order, since I plan to share pre-flood coverage tomorrow or over the weekend. But. I want to go ahead and share some photos from today's flooding. Cedar Rapids is in the midst of what is being called the worst flood in CR's history. Perhaps thousands of homes are affected, but I don't think we'll know that until the water recedes. Wednesday I was able to walk right up to the levee in the Time Check neighborhood (which would be considered 1st Street NW); today (Thursday, since I'm writing this late), I parked on 13th Street, and eventually had to leave because of flash flooding caused by heavy rains. It's a fine line to walk for journalists: do our job, or stay safe. It's not always a one-or-other situation, but today, I did have to make that decision.

My day started when I got a call about a levee break downtown. I never did find the levee, but I did find this abandoned car..


After filing some early photos, I headed to Time Check, one of the neighborhoods hardest hit. Just Wednesday, I was walking 6th Street (which was completely dry at the time) with some police officers as they alerted residents to the mandatory evacuation. These photos were taken at about 11th or 12th Street. The levee was breached in two places near this neighborhood, causing the water to rise rapidly, and leaving some residents stranded. (7th thru 13th Streets had been warned that there was a slight possibility, but only up to 7th was included in Wednesday's evacuation. Still, many residents outside the evacuation area were already packing up Wednesday.) I was amazed by the volunteers that live on higher ground, but came to the flooded areas with boats to help out.



This woman alerted firemen to a 95-year-old trapped on the second floor of his home. She was crying as a volunteer placed the man's dog in her arms and the firemen brought the man to safety.


After filing photos from Time Check, we slowly made our way to the edge of Czech Village; we had to take some creative side roads to get here, since nearly every major route in was closed by the National Guard. In the span of four or so hours, the river rose a long block and a half, to about waist deep at the speed limit sign, and impassable well in front of the car (I know.. I tried. I made the best $40 investment of my life when I bought chest-high waders.)



On the way back into town, the interstate was reopened but moving slowly.. slow enough for me to pull over a few times to take photos of the scene below. The photo at the top of this post is of May's Island, our City Hall. There are usually three bridges visible, and yesterday, the river was several feet below the retaining wall at City Hall. The speed at which it's risen is startling.


As exhausting as this is (my first day covering Cedar Rapids, I was awoken at 3:30 a.m. when Czech Village was evacuated), once we're off work the flood is still all we can talk about. Will the Gazette be evacuated? How will we put out the paper if the office is flooded? Is our printing press going to flood? Adding to that, on the radio tonight (AM 600 has been an incredible source of information) they said there's danger of CR running out of water.. which means my shower today was probably the last for a few days. I'm incredibly fortunate that my house is safe for now.. we're on an incline from the river, and I live on the second floor. So all of you can stop worrying, for now. (Honestly, I doubt it will make it this high. So really. Stop worrying. Though I do appreciate the concern.) I continue to be astounded at the sheer volume of water; seeing familiar landmarks, completely submerged in water; driving over the river on the 380 bridge and being unable to see any other bridge into town; downtown completely dark after losing power overnight... it's all surreal to me. So often, we cover events that don't affect us personally. Flooding in Olin earlier this spring, tornadoes further north, the immigration raid.. and we always have to be sensitive to the fact that we're out of our element, and that it could seem that we're taking advantage of someone's tragedy for our gain. But this is home. And it's a completely different experience, to cover a disaster at home. But even though I'm exhausted (physically and mentally), sunburned, continually wet, hungry, thirsty.. it's amazing to cover a story like this. This is history in the making.. and I'm there, waist-deep in floodwater (with my waders on, of course), documenting it.

All this, and the river still hasn't crested..

tornado / tribute

I do have a full post on last week's tornado coverage in the works (or, if not 'in the works,' at least on my mind). In the meantime, here's something I found at Michael's Trucking in Hazleton.. look familiar?

Postville raid

A stressful two-hour drive delivered me to Postville yesterday, where ICE was carrying out a raid on a meatpacking plant (specifically, the world's largest kosher meatpacking plant, and the largest immigration raid in the US). The Gazette has a series of articles up, but start here for the basics.. They went in with warrants or complaints for 697 people, and arrested 390. Just heard on the news that the equivalent of 1/6 of Postville's population was taken; local business owners fear that this will cripple the town's economy. All of my photos came from outside the plant; the church where everyone had gathered was off-limits to cameras, leaving me somewhat limited in what I could cover. I spent some time at the plant before filing from the Sweet Spot ice cream shop, which became the Gazette's Postville bureau as reporters Adam and Tina used my computer to file their stories while I went back and forth from the plant and the church.

This is pretty much what we saw for most of the day.. state troopers and ICE officers standing outside the plant. A lot of waiting.


A group of boys from the Yeshiva came to check out the scene on their extended lunch break. Because of the plant, there's a large Jewish population in Postville.. for such a small town, it has incredible diversity.. but walking downtown later, you wouldn't know it. It was a ghost town.



Workers began trickling out -- presumably those who were documented, or those with young children with no one to care for them.


This Homeland Security bus was the third bus of the day to leave the plant, but the first I saw since it took me awhile to get there from Cedar Rapids. They loaded the buses away from where we could see them (although some TV stations got aerials from their helicopters).


Violeta Aleman is a quality assurance auditor at the plant and US citizen since 2003. She brought her drivers' license with her to work Monday, and her husband brought her passport to the plant so she could be released. She was waiting outside the plant to see if any of the women she worked with would be released. I caught up with her a couple more times later in the day, and a few of the women had been let go.


Based on the interactions I observed and conversations I overheard, the girl in the middle is probably underage. She left with her father awhile later after they talked with ICE officers. The caption we used in the paper just referred to her and the other boy as plant workers, since I wasn't able to confirm that she was underage and undocumented.


After filing the photos above, I went back to the plant and found this woman, Osi M., crying and talking to friends. She wouldn't give her last name, but through a translator, I was told that her husband, Moshe M., was a legal resident from Israel, but was being held until his passport could be verified. Without a last name, we wouldn't run the photo (credibility issues), and we don't have a way of knowing one way or another what the story is. I think she understood why I wanted to use her photo -- to put a face on the loved ones left worrying about their spouses, parents, children -- but was adamant in not giving her last name. I'm still learning how to work in situations like these -- when it's okay to not have names, when we need them, how to respect their privacy while trying to do my job and tell the story of the day.


Another bus was leaving during the live 6:00 broadcasts..


I went back one more time after filing what I expected were my final images. The woman at the left was being consoled by a plant coworker or supervisor, and with a few steps in another direction, I saw the second woman crying as well. I sent the photo in from my car (the ice cream shop bureau was closed), and when I got back to the office, saw they'd placed it as the lede photo for Tuesday's paper.


There was white mesh over the windows of the buses, so those inside could see us, but we couldn't see them. My last stop at the plant was close to sunset, and the people inside were silhouetted by the sun shining through the mesh.. the only look we have at those being detained.

< /windy > < sunny >

Took a little adventure to Chicago last week with Courtney and Erika.. it was a badly needed break full of sunshine, shopping and sipping margaritas. A few more pics here and here.

hula! hoop!

Just an outtake from a shoot yesterday. I was never really able to master the hula hoop..

spring is (finally) here!

I spent my spare between-assignment time for the past month seeking out signs of spring. After the harsh winter we had, I can't get enough of sitting on my front porch, attempting to grill, soaking up the sun, and afternoon naps with the breeze blowing through my window. I don't even mind when birds start up chirping at 6:30 outside my window (and, while I was awake, I recorded some audio). Check out the slideshow here... it's been called soothing and meditative by a certain photo intern.