Been a while

I've been out of town and trying to get back up to date at work. We still have the effects of the flood (we will have them for years). Every day we are hearing about businesses that are not going to relocate or renovate but go out of business. It looks like there may need to be rethinking of where our arts campus is going to be. Apparently the UI's insurance company won't continue the policy for the Art Museum if it goes back where it was. The music building (not the auditorium but the building with the Music Department and recital facilities) may be beyond renovation.

They are still using the library parking lot to stage repairs to two adjacent buildings so they can be used for the fall term in some capacity.

For pictures of the flood and recovery try: http://www.flickr.com/photos/uinews/

Some interesting urls

http://www.iihr.uiowa.edu/initiatives/2008_Flood.html The hydrolics lab is right on the river just beyond the library.

http://imuflood.wordpress.com/ The IMU (Iowa Memorial Union) was badly flooded in 1993, it will be interesting to see what happens this year.

http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage The Iowa City Press Citizen

Some humor survives in spite of all:

http://www.gazetteonline.com/ Cedar Rapids is only 20 miles from Iowa City but is on the Cedar River as opposed to the Iowa River (Iowa City) so they are actually worse off earlier than we are/will be.

Well, it appears that this is going to be seriously beyond 1993

Above are some pictures from today. I took these from the 5th floor of the Library facing the river. We have been warned--for the first time in all the years I've lived here--that the library might actually have more than some water in the elevator shafts.

The UI has decided to close all buildings edging the river at 500PM tomorrow. I don't work on Fridays so that means I'll have to keep up on the internet and e-mail myself.

The Latest

Here are some pictures from 2:00 PM from the 5th floor of the Main Library of the University of Iowa.

Shakespeare Theatre stranded

The Shakespeare Theatre has had to move it's summer productions from their theater in Lower City Park due to the flooding. The Theatre is the building that looks like the Globe Theatre in the upper portion of the picture

Over the dam

It looks like the next few weeks (at least) are going to be fun. As it happens, I live up pretty high and not near any rivers and streams. Unlike many river towns, Iowa City's city center is built up above the river. In fact, most river property is university buildings (dumb, dumb, dumb--they are evacuating the Theater and Arts buildings as we speak), private property and commercial buildings. But most of Iowa City is above the river by quite a bit.

Well, last night at 8:30 the first water came over the spillway of the Coralville Dam. Here is today's Press Citizen: http://www.press-citizen.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage

And here is a commentary from a colleague of mine in the cataloging department from the same paper:

New Flood Site

The University of Iowa has set up a blog to keep track of UI flood information.

http://uiflood.blogspot.com/

OOPS

The local paper today:

I have been a bad blogger-over a month! I need to put up an account of my trip (my 14th, I think) to MediaWest Con at the end of may, but right now Iowa City and Coralville are in imminent danger of flooding.

In 1993 we had our "100 year flood" and it looks like this may be worse. the pictures above are of the Coralville Dam--built by the Core of Engineers to "control" water flow down the Iowa River. It is expected that the water will go over the spillway (picture on the right) sometime today.