Flooding in the Midwest

[ISUKappa]

Obviously, as I live here, that's all I see on the news. I have had people from around the country (and even a friend in Finland) contact me to see if we were okay, so it must be on somewhere. The worst of the flooding in our area is over although there are still areas downstream and on the Mississippi that are currently of concern.

I agree part of it has to do with the location/population density. I mean, almost everyone has heard of New Orleans but maybe 1/4 of the country (probably less) has heard of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or even care about Iowa in general. Multiple cities have been impacted with possibility of more as the flooding continues downstream. It's difficult to pinpoint one area whereas with Katrina, it was easy to focus on New Orleans.

Also, while 25,000 or so people were evacuated in Cedar Rapids, less than 20 people have died as a result of the flooding. And amazingly, looting is minimal. I was looking at the local paper today and they reported only one case so far.

What I don't think people realize is the economic impact these floods will have on consumers. Right now they're estimating 2-4% of the entire corn crop for the country is lost. Already corn prices are at record highs, but yields will be extremely low this year due to a cold, wet spring and the floods. Other commodities and produce will be affected as well. It is not going to be a good year for farmers.

ETA: Rob posted while I was in the middle of this post, and I agree with him also in the fact that we did have some time to prepare and do the best we could WRT sandbagging and creating barricades, even though much was for naught. While there have been disgruntled people, for the most part they are accepting of what the mayor, city council and governor have put into action. Hell, I can only shower every other day and can't flush our toilets until our water system is at 100% capacity and we were 15 blocks away from the worst of the flooding. It's not ideal, but I'll gladly take it if that means it will help recovery efforts. While this blows away the floods of '93, those also taught our cities lessons on preparedness and dealing with this type of catastrophe.

ETA2:
local news media websites:
www.gazetteonline.com - Cedar Rapids paper
www.dmregister.com - Des Moines paper

The image galleries from the Gazette are seriously insane.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by ISUKappa

Obviously, as I live here, that's all I see on the news. I have had people from around the country (and even a friend in Finland) contact me to see if we were okay, so it must be on somewhere. The worst of the flooding in our area is over although there are still areas downstream and on the Mississippi that are currently of concern.

I agree part of it has to do with the location/population density. I mean, almost everyone has heard of New Orleans but maybe 1/4 of the country (probably less) has heard of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or even care about Iowa in general. Multiple cities have been impacted with possibility of more as the flooding continues downstream. It's difficult to pinpoint one area whereas with Katrina, it was easy to focus on New Orleans.

Also, while 25,000 or so people were evacuated in Cedar Rapids, less than 20 people have died as a result of the flooding. And amazingly, looting is minimal. I was looking at the local paper today and they reported only one case so far.

What I don't think people realize is the economic impact these floods will have on consumers. Right now they're estimating 2-4% of the entire corn crop for the country is lost. Already corn prices are at record highs, but yields will be extremely low this year due to a cold, wet spring and the floods. Other commodities and produce will be affected as well. It is not going to be a good year for farmers.

Worth reporting nationwide, wouldn't you say?

[ISUKappa]

Originally Posted by UGAalum94

Worth reporting nationwide, wouldn't you say?

Yes, but there's a difference between a 30-second story on a newscast and a full news special on the situation, YK? The flooding in the Midwest has gotten mention in most news coverage, but not more than that. It was on the Yahoo frontpage for most of the weekend as well as on CNN and MSNBC Thurs-Sat, but as the floodwaters have [mostly] receded in Cedar Rapids (the largest affected city) and are starting to in other parts of the state, the focus has switched from MAJOR FLOODING to flood recovery. That's not nearly as exciting.

The worst of the flooding happened last week, at least in Cedar Rapids. No one thought it would be as bad as it was. It was a complete freak of nature compounded by the fact that up until last weekend, it's rained every day in June, and not just nice spring rains, we're talking about massive thunderstorms. The Cedar and Iowa Rivers were already swollen upstream and the amount of rain we got last week, and the fact it came so fast, compounded that issue. It has been an extremely wet spring overall, so the ground was already completely saturated and there was no where else for the water to go.

ETA: after a quick search on some websites, cnn.com; msnbc.com, foxnews.com, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe all have some mention on their front page. The LA Times, NY Times and the AJC have stories, but under their US/Nation tabs. I'm sure it's that way with many other newspapers.

[UGAalum94]

It was kind of funny that when we turned on PBS the question being asked to a Missouri professor right then was "is this situation comparable to Katrina?"

And I think that's what seems strange about the coverage.

It's almost like the media don't have the same enthusiasm for showing the public instances of successful local and state governments working in concert with people taking personal responsibility to keep a disastrous situation from taking a huge toll in human life as they do in blaming people after other disasters and seeing people as victims. Why would that be?