Tag Archives: 2008 floods

Striving for Flood Resilience in Iowa

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Collapse of the CRANDIC railroad bridge during the 2008 floods in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

In 2008, much of Iowa experienced such massive floods that 10 percent of Cedar Rapids was evacuated, books were being rescued from the basement of the University of Iowa Library, and homes were under water in Cedar Falls. Dozens of other Iowa communities faced flood waters to varying degrees, all remembering that it was only 15 years earlier that they had dealt with another massive emergency in the Midwest floods of 1993. After billions of dollars of damage and thousands of lost homes, Iowans were forced to confront the fact that so-called 100-year floods might in fact be far more frequent events of the future and that climate change was a reality for the Midwest as well as coastal states.

It was in this environment of concern about how Iowa would cope with future flood emergencies and disasters that the Iowa Legislature decided in 2009 to establish the Iowa Flood Center (IFC). Born of cooperative discussions between IIHR—Hydroscience and Engineering at the University of Iowa and state leaders, the Iowa Flood Center became a leading model for state technical outreach to communities regarding flood mitigation, flood awareness, and warning systems, including an extensive system of stream gauges. Centered at the Stanley Hydraulics Laboratory along the Iowa River, the Center manages the Iowa Flood Information System, a platform that gives communities across the state easy access to inundation maps, alerts, and real-time data on stream conditions.

Over intervening years, I have occasionally worked with staff at the Iowa Flood Center. In addition to their collaborative work in one flood recovery consulting project for the Iowa Economic Development Authority in which I participated, I also have hosted Associate Director Nate Young as a guest speaker in my University of Iowa School of Planning and Public Affairs class, “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery.” In every instance I have seen, IFC has been a class act. Visitors from other states have been intrigued with the Center as a model for their own states.

It should be no surprise at this point that I decided early on that our film project, Planning to Turn the Tide, needed to include some content about the work of the Iowa Flood Center and the changes it has introduced to flood preparation and recovery in Iowa. On July 17, as David Taylor and I were making our way back east from Colorado, we stopped in Iowa City for the purpose of taping an interview with IFC Director Witold Krajewski, a veteran environmental engineer who has become intimately familiar with the hazard mitigation and planning needs of the hundreds of small communities, as well as larger cities, throughout a state that has seen more than its fair share of flood disasters. We also met with Kate Giannini, Iowa Watershed Approach Program Manager, about access for our film project to flood footage and other resources from the Iowa Flood Center that would help tell the story visually as well as in words.

Click here to watch the blog video about our visit to Iowa City.

As always, if you wish to support the Planning to Turn the Tide documentary film project, use this link or the QR code below to access our donations link on the APA website. We can use your help and will truly appreciate the support.

Jim Schwab

Twenty Thousand and Rising

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What astounds me about what I am about to say is that the last time I posted to this blog was July 24, more than a month ago. There are reasons for that, but in the meantime, despite the lack of new articles, this blog continued to find new subscribers—and their numbers just yesterday crossed the 20,000 mark. Already, the numbers have exceeded that threshold by a few dozen. I would have expected the increase to decrease until I wrote something new. I can only assume that past writings have continued to propel interest despite my lack of activity. That fact is profoundly humbling.

I wrote twice in July. The other post occurred on the July 4 holiday. It detailed my cataract surgery in June and offered some medical history concerning the procedure. What followed, in addition to two trips to Colorado and one to Washington, D.C., between mid-July and early August, was a mad rush connected to a fall semester course I teach for the University of Iowa’s School of Urban and Regional Planning, as an adjunct assistant professor. But this year, the decision was made to move my class online, which meant a great deal of added work to make that change possible. And just to complicate matters, in mid-August, my laptop suffered a hard drive failure that delayed my timeline. I then worked to restore course-related files, an odyssey I will not detail here. It would be an overdose of minutiae.

I have been teaching in Iowa City since 2008. After the massive floods that struck much of eastern Iowa and some neighboring states in June of that year, the planning program began an urgent search for a way to add curriculum related to natural hazards and to make itself more relevant and useful to communities in Iowa needing assistance with flood recovery. It was easier to import such expertise than to develop it among existing faculty, apparently, because they soon made an offer for me to teach beginning that fall. I am an alumnus of the program, and they knew me well. At the time, I was already co-instructing such a course at the University of Illinois-Chicago with colleague Richard Roths, although that ended after the spring 2009 class the following year. But the arrangement with the University of Iowa has continued. The course has grown and evolved over time, naturally, just as the subject matter for “Planning for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery” has also changed. Every year is a new adventure and an exercise in updating teaching materials. As I like to say, it is hardly like teaching Shakespeare. The script is rewritten with each new major disaster. Recent years have added multiple exclamation points to that statement.

Thus, while the subscriber count was climbing yesterday, I was preparing for and then presiding over the first online class session for URP:6280 last night, with eleven students in attendance. I still have work to do in reformatting PowerPoint files from past years and recording lecture videos that used to be presented in a classroom. But I discovered yet again that, from the first class to the last, my students are inquisitive and thoughtful and have very good reasons for choosing this course as an elective in pursuit of their Master of Arts in Urban and Regional Planning. As before, some make clear that they see this as possibly the most important class they will take. Some past students are now in leadership roles in the field of hazard mitigation and disaster recovery planning. They are not deluded about the challenges that communities will face under the influence of climate change, demographic shifts, and other factors. They want to do the planning that matters.

Although I have not written much for this blog lately, that will change very soon. I had to keep my priorities straight, however; my students had to have their materials ready on the course website by Monday, August 26, as classes started, and it was my obligation to make that happen. After Labor Day, I can gradually shift some of my attention elsewhere. My recent travels, to San Francisco in April, Manitoba and Cleveland in May, and to Colorado and Washington in July and August have supplied me with excellent subject matter for at least several future posts. I relish the prospect of making up for lost time with subscribers both new and old. Thanks to everyone for their support and interest.

Jim Schwab