By: Scott Wittstruck '93

I have spent the last twelve years living in eastern Iowa. I moved to Iowa City in January of 1996, and then I moved to Cedar Rapids in 2003. My wife, Nancy, has spent her entire life in the Cedar Rapids area. She graduated from Marion High School, she attended Cornell College in Mount Vernon, and she has worked for the last 10 years for McLeod USA (now called Paetec). In 2005, Nancy and I built our house in Marion, and our daughter, Gracie, was born at St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids on September 22, 2006. Counting my four years in college, I have now lived in my adopted home-state longer than any other, including the state that I have always considered my "home," Nebraska.

During the last week, eastern Iowa has taken a major hit. I know a little something about flooding. During the summer of 1993, after I graduated from Grinnell, I lived with my mother and sister in Columbia, Missouri, before leaving for Washington, D.C., to spend a year volunteering at a homeless shelter. During that summer, I spent almost every night after work laying sandbags along the Missouri River. But this year, the flooding in eastern Iowa has affected me to an extent that I never imagined in 1993. It did so largely due to my relationship with three local institutions-my church in Cedar Rapids, my employer, and the University of Iowa in Iowa City.

Since August of 1994, I have worked for just three different construction companies. I started working for my current employer, ASG Construction, Inc., in September of 2003. The company's owner, Andy Gnida, a transplanted New Yorker, wrestled for the Hawkeyes in the mid-1980s, and started his company in 1992. With an average of approximately 20 employees, it is the largest of the three companies for whom I have worked over the years, but Andy has always made the company feel like a family. We have great benefits, we earn good wages, and he has shown genuine camaraderie with all of us. In January of 2006, when I fell off a roof and shattered my right ankle, hip, and wrist, he visited me in the hospital and created a new administrative position for me when I could finally come back to work… nine months later. He is my boss, of course, but I am not ashamed to call him one of my closest friends in this city. Our office is located on 3rd Street NW, approximately 300 yards from the Cedar River and below the level of the levees.

In 1998, I went back to school, earning my masters' degree in education from the University of Iowa. I finally took my comp's in the summer of 2001, completed my student-teaching, and got my license. Though I never pursued teaching as a career, I still feel a deep affinity for the University, and especially for the Lindquist Center-the headquarters of the English Department which stands just across the street from the University Library (and the Iowa River).

In 2003, when Nancy and I got engaged, she indicated that she wanted to get married in a church. My grandfather had been a United Methodist minister in western Iowa, and my father (and now, my brother, from the class of '08) graduated from Morningside College in Sioux City. I told Nancy that, if he got married in a church, then it would have to be a Methodist Church. So, we joined Salem United Methodist, a wonderful congregation that sits at the intersection of 1st Avenue W and 3rd St. NW, in the shadow of the I-380 overpass known as the "5 and 1" and just a few blocks south of ASG Construction's office. Our pastor, Reverend Linda Bibb, performed our marriage ceremony, and she baptized Gracie. She also visited me in the hospital several times after my accident. Nancy and I both play in the hand-bell choir, and until we started building our house in 2005, I was a member of the trustees board. The members of Salem have become like an extended family for us, and the church, itself, is very dear to our hea rts.

In the past week, all three of these connections to our family have been in jeopardy. In some cases, they were almost severed. It all began on…

Tuesday, June 10: At approximately 1:00 p.m., I got back to the ASG Construction office. Andy had arrived there, and was discussing our flood protection plans with two women who work for an attorney in the same building. Andy co-owns the building with his wife, a local Dale Carnegie franchisee, and the attorney. Andy and I drove down to the City of Cedar Rapids public works shed on 6th Street SW. We hopped out of our trucks, grabbed two shovels that he had brought along, and started filling sand-bags. We filled four pallets of sand-bags, and then we loaded one pallet into each of our trucks.

We drove back to the office building, with the two pallets in tow, and laid the sand-bags in front of the front and back doors of the building. We built a two-foot-high, U-shaped well around the front door, and a two-foot-high wall across the back door. Based on then-current predictions about flood levels, Andy and I hoped that that would be sufficient, despite the fact that, as I mentioned previously, our building is about 300 yards from the river and below the elevation of the levee.

The City of Cedar Rapids had placed concrete bunkers around all of the manholes in the streets and on the sidewalks in the 500-year flood plain, and surrounded those bunkers with sandbags. There were several bunkers like that in the street in front of our office building. I went home Tuesday night feeling tired but secure that we would be all right. Based on the predictions at that time, we all thought that we should be.

Wednesday, June 11: At 5:30 a.m., Nancy told me that the entire 500-year flood plain was under a mandatory evacuation order, including our office. I immediately drove down to our office building. The bunkers around the sewer drains had started to back up, and brown water had started bubbling out from under the sand-bags around those bunkers. At that time, the water was just below the top of the curb in front of our office. Our office building stands at the top of a flight of steps, so it is about four feet above the curb. I called Andy and left him a message about the current situation, and then went back home to get Gracie ready to go to day care.

I dropped Gracie off at day care, and then drove down to North Liberty, Iowa, on I-380, to check up on all of our job-sites down there. I left Andy another message, saying that I no longer believed that our sand-bags would suffice to hold back the water. He called back, and indicated that he agreed with me. I headed back to the office, and got there around 9:00 a.m. Andy called the foremen of our trim crew and one of our framing crews, and told them to bring their crews up to the office, too. At 9:00 a.m., the water was up over the curb.

Andy took our company dumptruck and picked up a load of raw sand. The attorney who co-owns the building with Andy and his wife picked up four rolls of painter's plastic and some duct tape. We laid the plastic against the base of the outside walls, with approximately four feet up on the walls and four feet stretching out over the sidewalk around the building. We then shoveled four feet of sand around the entire perimeter of the building, on top of the plastic sheathing. We covered that sand with plastic, and then built a four-foot-high wall of sandbags around the sand-wall. The water continued to creep higher all day, and within just a few minutes, we were wading in it.

With my busticated ankle, and two blown discs in my back, I must admit that I started to feel the effects of the strenuous activity. More than two years removed from my accident, I have pretty-much lost the "superhuman" endurance and muscle stamina of a framing carpenter. By the time that I left the office at 5:00 p.m. that evening, I knew that I would be sore on Thursday. The water in the street was waist-deep. At that point, we still thought that we would be all right with our current fortifications; the Army Corps of Engineers was predicting that the river would crest at 24 feet--which is almost five feet above the crest in 1993. Our four-foot walls should have protected the building from the 24' flood level. Normally, I just drive down two blocks, make a left turn, and hit the on-ramp to I-380 northbound in just two minutes after leaving my office. Wednesday night, it took me an hour to get from our office to the interstate, after a detour that moved at a snail's pace. I tried to get to Salem afte r I left the office, but the police would not allow me to go through their barricades. I would live to regret that they did not let me through, although in retrospect, it would not have made any difference.

Thursday, June 12: As expected, I woke up barely able to move, because I had injured my right ankle (the one held together by four screws), and I had also re-aggravated the blown discs in my back. It had resumed raining, and by day's end, Cedar Rapids would get 5.5 inches of rain. I dropped Gracie off at day care at approximately 8:00 a.m. At that point, I had no plan to go in to work, because I knew that we would not get anything accomplished at the office, AND I did not want to drive down to North Liberty just to work on some rinky-dink inside work. At this stage in my career, if I am going to frame a house, then I'm going to do it on sunny days.

While I was still at Gracie's day care, the power went out. Nancy also called me to let me know that the power had gone out at our house. Just a few minutes after the lights went out at the day care, the transformer down the street blew. Everyone in the room, except me, screamed, including the staff-members. I went outside to check on their meter, and it looked fine, though it had shut off, of course. I gave the day care manager my cell phone number, so that they could call me if they decided to close. I then headed north on Center Point Road, intending to go to Acme Tools-our company's local supplier for tools and fasteners-and buy a battery-powered radio and a few other emergency supplies.

When I got to the intersection of Center Point Road and 42nd Street, a water main break had flooded the road. I hit the brakes, put my Pathfinder in park, and turned on my hazard lights. A girl in a Chevy Cavalier was stuck in the middle of the floodwaters, with water just under the bottom of her windows. I got out of my car, walked out into the water, and pushed her out. The water was up to my waist... again. This was actually one of the least intelligent things that I did during the flood. The water could have very easily swept me off of my feet, into one of the storm drains. I don't like to think about how such an incident would have ended.

After I finished with that little adventure, I went to Acme, and bought a portable radio, and then I went to the grocery store and bought three cases of 20-oz. bottles of water. Nancy and I expected that the city water supply would be shut down, and we wanted to make sure that we had potable water for the duration of any dry spell. I also stopped at the local clinic and got a tetanus shot. After all, I had spent several hours on Wednesday buried up to my waist in raw sewage. Might as well be safe, right?

By the time that I got home, the power had come back on, but I got a call from the day care that they were closing. I drove back and picked up Gracie, and then came back home. The rain continued to come down in a torrent like few that I have witnessed in recent memory. On the way home, I noticed a fleet of police cars flying up behind me, lights blazing. They were escorting a quartet of city buses. It took me a second to recognize what I was seeing. The city jail sits below the county courthouse on Mays Island, along with Cedar Rapids' City Hall, in the middle of the Cedar River. They were evacuating the prisoners, because Mays Island would soon be underwater. When I got home, I turned on the local ABC affiliate, and we have been watching it ever since, bearing witness to the devastation all around us.

Every hour on Thursday, the river had claimed another block in downtown Cedar Rapids. By Thursday night, our office building was under 6 feet of water. Salem is at ground zero of the flooding. By Thursday night, Salem's basement was full of water, and it was halfway up the ground floor. With my body so completely ravaged by all of these old injuries, I could not do anything but watch the screen. I do not quite know how to describe the sensations of frustration, helplessness, grief, and fear that overwhelm a person when he/she watches his/her place of business and place of worship succumb to a natural disaster.

1993 crest at Cedar Rapids: 19.3 feet
River level on Thursday night: 29.9 feet
Predicted crest on Friday morning: 32 feet.

Friday, June 13: I drove down to North Liberty to set trusses on a house that we have been framing. I got there at about 8:00 a.m. due to traffic. When I crossed the I-380 bridge that looks over Salem Church, the water had reached the middle of the second-floor windows. In fact, the water was just below the concrete cross-members that support 5 in 1 bridge on the I-380 overpass. Our office building was under at least 10 feet of water. We had no idea that it would get that high, so we left our computer, files, financial records, and (worst for me) pictures of Gracie in the office, up on tables and on top of filing cabinets. All of that is gone now. I cannot even imagine what might have been lost at Salem. I know that they moved as much as possible to the second floor, but we will not know for some time yet how much damage the church might have suffered inside.

In North Liberty, we got done setting trusses at noon on Friday, and I headed back home. It took me an hour to go from the Eastern Iowa Airport to the I-380 overpass that goes past my church. That normally takes approximately five minutes. When I went by Salem, I felt sick-both in my gut and my heart. Nancy told me that the river crested at Cedar Rapids on Friday morning at 10:30 a.m.--at 31.1 feet. That is almost twelve feet above the crest of the 1993 flood. At 3:00 p.m. Friday, the local ABC affiliate had a reporter on the bridge overlooking our church, and Pastor Linda called in live to the TV station. Salem Church was built in the early 1890's. Rev. Linda reminded viewers, however, that the church is not the building, but the people who worship there. But I could hear the pain in her voice. She has been the minister there for nine years, but June 29 was scheduled to be her last Sunday before she moves to a new church in Webster City. And yet, I could hear the hope in her voice, too. And she's right: it is the parishioners in the congregation who make a church, not the building. We can try to clean up Salem, and maybe even re-build. At least, no one was hurt.

The Iowa DOT closed I-380 at 6:00 p.m. Friday, and at the time, we believed that it would remain closed for a week. To get from Cedar Rapids to Iowa City, a person would have to drive north to Highway 20, up by Waterloo, and then drive west to I-35, by Mason City, and then drive south to Des Moines on I-35, and then turn east on I-80. A drive that normally takes 25 minutes would now take about five hours and 281 extra miles. Mercy Hospital in Cedar Rapids shut down due to flooding. City Hall and the County Courthouse flooded. We all went on water restrictions, as Cedar Rapids lost all but one of its pump stations. Cedar Rapids was basically cut off, and Iowa City expected to get hit even worse when the raging Iowa River floodwaters reached that city. They predicted that Iowa City would crest at about 35 feet. At that point, almost every bridge over either the Cedar or Iowa Rivers had been washed out. The Czech and Slovak Museum, the National African-American History Museum, the Cedar Rapids Public Li brary, the Science Station, and historic neighborhoods like Czech Village were completely submerged, with water up to their roofs.

City blocks evacuated in Cedar Rapids: 1,800
Persons displaced by the flood in Cedar Rapids: 25,000

And then, over the weekend, the floodwaters hit Iowa City. I watched in growing horror as Iowa students braved rain, hail, and even a tornado warning to lay sand-bags around the University Library, the Art Museum, the Art Department, the Student Union, and the Lindquist Center. As when I saw the damage inflicted upon Salem, I felt that now-familiar amalgamation of frustration, sorrow, and fear as I watched. Worse yet, in addition to all of my injuries, I was hampered by that ridiculous 281-mile, 5-hour detour. I wanted so badly to help protect the University from the river, but I could not get there.

Saturday, June 14: I got a call from Andy, asking me to go check on Irving Point. Irving Point is a 60-unit assisted living facility on 9th Avenue SE, just a block south of Mercy Hospital. ASG Construction framed and trimmed the building for one of our biggest customers. It got eighteen inches of water inside. Andy wanted me to open up all of the doors and windows, so that it could get some fresh air inside. On the drive over there, I saw things that I could only describe as surreal. I saw a man in a pickup truck make a u-turn, and his right rear wheel fell into an open manhole. I saw ducks swimming in the middle of 8th Street SE. And everywhere, I saw houses with a brown line running along the siding and piles of garbage in their yards.

Sunday, June 15: Salem held services at Lovely Lane United Methodist Church in Cedar Rapids. I would really like to thank everyone at Lovely Lane for their very generous hospitality. Their minister addressed our congregation at the very beginning of our service, and he said, "This building is your home. Members of any United Methodist Church are members of every United Methodist Church." That kind of compassion and kindness characterizes approximately 99.99% of all behavior in eastern Iowa right now. Everyone has come together, cooperating and helping each other, trying to get this region back on the track to recovery. While I'm thanking people, let's add the City of Cedar Rapids, Linn County, Kirkwood Community College, the local municipal, county, and state law enforcement and firefighting departments, the Red Cross, the United Way, CorridorRecovery.org, St. Luke's and Mercy Hospitals, the Iowa National Guard, and KCRG TV-9, the local ABC affiliate. All of these organizations have worked tirel essly to protect and inform the people of eastern Iowa, and they have all done an amazing job of coordinating us and getting us organized.

Everywhere I look downtown, Cedar Rapids looks like a warzone. The bridges all have tons of debris piled against them. The railroad bridge at Quaker Oats has a half-dozen houseboats smashed up against it. Every house has those piles of garbage lining the streets, and thousands of people are walking around downtown wearing Hazmat suits and dust-masks. Every third truck is pulling a trailer, with some logo emblazoned on the side like "Water Out," "All Clean," "Servpro," et al. Every hotel in town is booked solid for months. At our church, I met a couple of fellas from New Jersey, in town to help clean up some of the local businesses and the police station. They donated the use of their convectant air machine to us, for free, for 36 hours, while they waited to start their next project.

Yesterday, I pulled the ceiling down in the basement of Salem. I was working in almost total darkness, standing in four inches of soggy sludge, pulling down the old metal-lath plaster with nothing more than my hands and a crowbar (don't worry: I was wearing rubber boots, two pairs of gloves, a mask, safety glasses, and a hard-hat). On the day before that, Reverend Linda's son, Nick-who specializes in disaster recovery-had pumped 90,000 gallons of water out of that basement. After I finished pulling the ceiling down, Nick and I broke out all of the windows in the basement. Today, I single-handedly demolished all of the pews in the sanctuary with a maul. Tomorrow, I will go back to the church and help haul out all of the debris that I created (they would not let me do it by myself today), and then rip out the carpet. I have been doing this stuff while also working at three separate framing projects this week. I feel a little guilty about not helping out more to clean out our office building, but I did he lp sand-bag it, and the church needs my help more than my boss right now. At our church, I'm the most experienced construction worker available; at our office, I'm just another person standing around watching the two guys in skid loaders.

Nancy has been working nearly around-the-clock at Paetec, trying to get the emergency phone lines up and running for Alliant Energy, Mid-American Energy, and the local government hotlines. A friend of ours, who works as the chief producer for KCRG TV-9 (the local ABC affiliate) worked over 100 hours last week.

I am trying to get my boss into a meeting with Reverend Linda and the other big-wigs in the congregation, so that he can bid on the clean-up project. The church owns land on the northeast side of town, too… far from the river. We may build a brand-new facility on that land. I would like to try to get Andy the opportunity to bid on that project, too. Now, if I can just work the University of Iowa into the equation, then maybe I can do some good for all three of my connections.

This is not over. As the water rages south toward the Gulf of Mexico, these floods will continue. They have already decimated southeastern Iowa, and then it will move on toward Missouri, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. However, hopefully, people will continue to come together, work together, help each other, offer up a pair of hands, or a pair of gloves, a hot meal, a warm bed, a skid loader, or a convectant air machine. In Iowa City, they rounded up all of the unused sand-bags and trucked them down south to Burlington. That is the kind of ingenuity and generosity that will help all of us get through this together. That kind of collaboration and community is our only hope, as Mother Nature reminds us that we are no match for Her when we fail to live in harmony with Her.

Please keep all of the people affected by this natural disaster in your thoughts and prayers. If you would like to help, please contact me at:

Scott Wittstruck '93
scottwittstruck@gmail.com