Iowa Flooding

So a buddy of mine asked me last week how my in-laws are doing with the Iowa floods. The above picture was sent from my father in law, Ron. This is across the river facing thier house. This is after the flood has begun receding. It's still at 6 feet when normal is 2.

Jen's parents live in Waverly, iowa, one of the first towns flooded by the Cedar River. But, because the news in Wichita only really reported on Cedar Rapids (an hour or so away) and Des Moines (2 1/2 hours away) we never really thought of them being in danger.

Of course, the fact that the Cedar River runs THROUGH thier back yard (literally, thier back yard) I should have been clued in.

The section of river that runs through thier back yard is almost entirely shallow. 3/4 of it is between 9 inches and 2 feet. The other 1/4 is no deeper than 6 feet.

Well, at it's height, it was over 30 feet! dang!

Here is a picture of thier house after the flood. You can see that it is a two story home and they've done so much work to it! The basement/or bottom level has a retaining wall around it for when it does flood.





Mom and Dad knew it was coming so dad built on as high as he could to the retaining wall. It didn't work. They were able to get almost everything upstairs except for a couple couches they just tied to the rafters. The water came up 3/4 of the way...what is that...like 6 feet of water into the bottom level. And it destroyed the two couches.

Also, in the middle of the picture you can see a set of four french doors. this is my parent's new bedroom doors. The ones to the left are white and the ones to the right look greyish/blue for some reason.

Here's is how high the water became:

















This is looking back at the other porch to the left.



















this is the top of my dad's hangar where he keeps his tractor and ultralight. It's DOWNHILL from the house. Mom said that he was able to lay a sandbag on top of the hangar roof from the jet ski when the water was at or near it's highest.


















they are doing good. They are an official disaster area which inlcudes showering at the red cross and eating fema food. Thanks for your prayers for them!