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Oshkosh Awash!

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:05 am
by painless
[img][img]http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/1003/oshfloodij5.jpg[/img]


This is what US 41 looks like just north of the EAA grounds. To be specific, at the 9th street exit....where Perkins is.

We have had two days of heavy rain and this is the result. I can only imagine what the campground looks like! Would not have been a good week to have Airventure!

All this pales to what the folks in Iowa are going through.........

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:44 am
by cjensen
Jeez!!

Is there a Walgreens (or some sort of drug store) to the left of the pic, outside the view of the pic? Just trying to see this area better in my head. I remember the Perkins...it's off the right of the pic, correct?

:o :o

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:49 am
by painless
Not sure about the Walgreens. There is some sort of such store there at that intesection. You are correct...Perkins is to the right.

This is a shot looking south. To the left are all the fast food restaurants like McDonalds, Culvers, Pizzahut, etc.

I guess a majority of the streets in town are flooded.

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 6:47 pm
by svanarts
Just took a look at the Pioneer Airport live webcam. Doesn't look too bad there. Blue skies and green grass! Not sure how much water is pooled up in that grass but all the taxiways are dry.

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 7:01 pm
by painless
Yeah, it was a nice day today. I am curious what the campground looked like during and immediately after the storm.

Oshkosh and Fond Du Lac are both still under a civil emergency. Lots of flooding remains.

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 8:41 pm
by JohnR
Looks pretty familiar, looks like a lot of Iowa right now. One of my clients had 4 to 6 foot of water in their first floor. They are a manufacturing facility and they are hoping they have enough insurance to cover the damage. The river crested in Cedar Rapids today and is supposed to crest in Iowa City Sunday or Monday.

All I can say is I'm glad I live on a hill. :|

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 8:57 pm
by painless
Good to hear from you John. I was wondering how you were doing out there. Glad you are high and dry.

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:07 pm
by cjensen
Anyone know how it looks in Boone? I was gonna go, but plans got cancelled, so I won't be there...

Did western IA get as much rain?

:(

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:15 pm
by painless
Sounds like the campground at OSH made it through all this OK........

http://www.eaa.org/news/2008/2008-06-13_weather.asp

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 9:44 pm
by JohnR
We are doing fine here. If our place floods we will all need an ark.

I would guess Boone should be ok as most of the flooding has been more on the eastern side of Iowa. Is it this weekend? I would have liked to have gone to it but just to much going on.

Our EAA meeting was canceled tonight due to the flooding. Mandatory evacuations are in effect in Iowa City now. Most of our chapter is in Cedar Rapids or Iowa City and I'm sure several are getting hit pretty hard with this. My nephew and his wife had to evacuate and my sister and her husband have a couple of properties that are under water.

The Iowa City airport waas supposed to have the Barnstomers there tomorrow ot start their summer tour. I'm guessing that is canceled as the airport is very close if not in the 500 year flood plane which they are expectign to be hit later this weekend. They were moving some of the planes from hangars to the ramp due to water it sounds like.

A railroad bridge in CR actually went down. This water is nothing to mess with!

Glad the camp ground is ok.

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 10:00 pm
by svanarts
The company we farm our customer service out to is completely underwater. Not sure what city they are in but it's one of the flooded cities in Iowa. Their reps are able to answer the phone but all their network equipment is in the basement which is underwater so they cannot log into our systems to process customer requests. We are dead in the water so to speak.

Iowa is underwater!

Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2008 11:13 pm
by RV9inIowa
JohnR - gald you're OK! We're doing fine here in Cedar Rapids, but lots of people are not. Our house is between Cedar Rapids and Palo - both are flooded. I think Palo is 100% underwater. You can walk from our neighborhood to the new location of the Cedar River. It is so sad to see the damage. Someone less than 0.5 miles from me lost their house after a 3 day sandbagging battle. Now the city is runnning out of drinking water. We have a well, so we'll be OK as long as the power is on.

I was going to Boone, but I don't think there is any way to drive there. Also, I380 is the only way to get to the airport and it keeps closing and has huge backups. Guess I'll stay home and pound rivets instead.

Stay safe all!

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 8:53 am
by JohnR
Scott, I thin I know which company that would be and thye are in downtown Cedar Rapids. Everything downtown that is within 6 or seven blocks of the river is pretty much under water.

One of the advertising agencies I do a lot of work for is trying to decide where they can work next week as their building has water in the first floor. Luckily they are on the third floor but still don't know when they will get power back. The officials also will not let them in to get their equipment.

Dave, glad to hear your doing ok. Palo is not looking so good from what I have seen. Getting around CR or IC is not an easy task now days either. Glad I don't have to try to get to either one for work on a daily basis. They had, as of yesterday, closed I-80 East of Iowa City which I think is a first. Between I-380 and I-80 problems this whole ordeal has really stopped traffic through the state in either direction.

Be careful up there and stay dry.

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 4:44 pm
by svanarts
JohnR wrote:Scott, I thin I know which company that would be and thye are in downtown Cedar Rapids. Everything downtown that is within 6 or seven blocks of the river is pretty much under water.
The name of the company is APAC. Is that them?

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 5:09 pm
by TomC
Dave, I heard that the water in Palo was so deep that it came to the bottom of a Phillips 76 elevated highway sign. Are you high enough? We are east of Cedar Rapids near Mount Vernon and OK. For work, we rented a 400KW generator from St Louis and what is normally a 5 hour drive took from 3PM to 7AM to get it here. John, I'm glad to hear that you're OK. Hopefully, both of your power holds out.

Stay dry and high (literaly). Also, don't drive through the water like the truck driver in the original Oshkosh picture shows.

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:02 am
by JohnR
Scott, yep APAC is the company I thought you were talking about. It will probably be a while before they are back in business looks like.

Tom, you are right about the water, stay out of it. One of the worst problems is all of the manhole covers got blown off I hear. Be bad in a car but I don't even want to think what would happen if someone walking stepped into one. No one would ever know where they went.

Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:16 am
by RVNewsletter
I talked to a few people who went to Boone. There was some flooding on the turf runway but the big problem was crosswinds. One friend he saw "all sorts of interesting landings." Apparently a lot of folks used the turf runway to leave, but it was pretty squirrely. That said, everyone said they had a good time.