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Rising River Swamps Iowa City

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The Associated Press

Published: June 16, 2008

IOWA CITY, Iowa - A week's work of frantic sandbagging by students, professors and the National Guard couldn't spare this bucolic college town from the surging Iowa River, which has swamped more than a dozen campus buildings and forced the evacuation Sunday of hundreds of nearby homes.

The swollen river, which bisects this city of about 60,000, was topping out at about 31.5 feet - 1 1/2 feet below earlier predictions. But it still posed a lingering threat, and wasn't expected to begin receding until tonight.

"I'm focused on what we can save," University of Iowa President Sally Mason said as she toured her stricken campus. "We'll deal with this when we get past the crisis. We're not past the crisis yet."

The university said 16 buildings had been flooded, including one designed by acclaimed architect Frank O. Gehry, and others were at risk.

Iowa City Mayor Regenia Bailey said residents were ordered from 500 to 600 homes and hundreds of others were under a voluntary evacuation order through the morning. The city had no estimate of the number of homes that flooded.

Gov. Chet Culver said it was "a little bit of good news" that the river had crested, but cautioned that the situation remains precarious.

"Just because a river crests does not mean it's not a serious situation," Culver said. "You're still talking about a very, very dangerous public safety threat."

Elsewhere, state officials girded for serious flooding threats in Burlington and southeast Iowa, including Fort Madison and Keokuk. Officials said 500 National Guard troops had been sent to Burlington, a Mississippi River town of about 27,000, and that some people were being evacuated.

Culver said the state was likely to "see major and serious flooding on every part of the southeastern border of our state from New Boston and down."

In Cedar Rapids - where high water forced about 24,000 people from their homes - residents waited hours to get their first close look since flooding hammered most of the city earlier this week.

The city's municipal water system was back to 50 percent of capacity Sunday, a big victory after three of the city's four drinking water collection wells were contaminated by murky, petroleum-laden floodwater. That contamination had left only about 15 million gallons a day for the city of more than 120,000 and the suburbs that depend on its water system.

At the University of Iowa Arts Campus on the river's west bank, some buildings had as much as 8 feet of water inside.

Elsewhere in the Midwest, hundreds of Illinois National Guard members headed to communities along the swollen Mississippi River on Sunday for sandbagging duty while emergency management officials eyed rain-swollen rivers across the state.

Two levees broke Saturday near the Mississippi River town of Keithsburg, Ill., flooding the town of 700 residents about 35 miles southwest of Moline.

The National Weather Service said the Mississippi would crest Tuesday morning near Keithsburg at 25.1 feet. Flood stage in the area is 14 feet. Rising water threatening approaches also prompted Illinois officials to close a Mississippi River bridge at Quincy.

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