IOWA CITY, Iowa — A week’s work of frantic sandbagging by students, professors and the National Guard couldn’t spare this bucolic college town from the surging Iowa River, which has swamped more than a dozen campus buildings and forced the evacuation Sunday of hundreds of nearby homes.
The swollen river, which bisects this city of about 60,000 residents, was topping out at about 31.5 feet — a foot and a half below earlier predictions. But it still posed a lingering threat and wasn’t expected to begin receding until tonight.
“I’m focused on what we can save,” University of Iowa President Sally Mason said as she toured the campus. “We’ll deal with this when we get past the crisis. We’re not past the crisis yet.”
The university said 16 buildings had been flooded, including one designed by acclaimed architect Frank O. Gehry, and others were at risk.
Iowa City Mayor Regenia Bailey said people in 500 to 600 homes were ordered to evacuate and hundreds of others were under a voluntary evacuation order through Sunday morning. The city had no estimate of the number of homes that had flooded.
Bailey said homeowners will not be allowed back until the city determines it’s safe.
Gov. Chet Culver said it was “a little bit of good news” that the river had crested, but cautioned that the situation was still precarious.
“Just because a river crests does not mean it’s not a serious situation,” he said. “You’re still talking about a very, very dangerous public safety threat.”
Elsewhere, state officials girded for serious flooding threats in Burlington and southeast Iowa including Fort Madison and Keokuk.
Officials said 500 National Guard troops had already been sent to Burlington, a Mississippi River town of about 27,000, and some people were being evacuated.
Culver said the southeastern part of the state was likely to “see major and serious flooding on every part of the southeastern border of our state from New Boston and down.”
In Cedar Rapids — where flooding had forced the evacuation of about 24,000 people — residents waited hours to get their first up-close look since flooding hammered most of the city last week.
Some grew angry after long waits to pass through checkpoints.
Cedar Rapids officials also were inspecting homes for possible electrical and structural hazards.
“It’s stupid,” said Vince Fiala, who said he waited for hours before police allowed him to walk to his house. “People are down on their knees and they’re kicking them in the teeth.”
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More than a million people flee China floods
BEIJING — At least 57 people have died and seven are missing in flooding across a stretch of southern China, state media reported Sunday.
More than 1.2 million people have been forced to flee their homes across nine provinces, including Sichuan, which is still reeling from last month’s earthquake that killed almost 70,000 people, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
Heavy rain in Sichuan, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces will further raise water levels downstream, especially in the coastal manufacturing powerhouse of Guangdong, Xinhua says. Most of the areas are expected to receive more rain in the next 10 days.
Just to the south, communities with tens of thousands of people were threatened by the swollen Xijiang River in the Guangxi region, where a 130-foot crack had opened in an embankment near Changzhou, Xinhua said.
Associated Press
