Cedar Rapids, Linn tally up damage, prepare for cleanup

CEDAR RAPIDS - Pounding rain, overwhelmed sewers and high winds here in the last few days prompted 700 calls for city help, damaged trees at 240 locations and left 25 homes with basement or foundation problems and 37 too unsafe to occupy, City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said.

Pomeranz, Mayor Ron Corbett and other city officials spoke at a Wednesday news conference at the Cedar Rapids Police Department to report on the tally of damage caused by the half-week of nasty weather.

The storms and flash flooding caused $2 million in city street damage and required firefighters to rescue 20 motorists from high water and police to handle 60 vehicles that had floated down streets, the officials said.

Corbett extended condolences to the family of Logan Blake, 17, who died this week after being swept up by fast-moving storm runoff into a city storm sewer.

Corbett said the death reminded him that it was 'nothing short of a miracle” that no one died six years ago in the historic Flood of 2008.

Outside, through the police department's big conference room windows, the Cedar River was speeding by, still at major flood stage and projected to climb to 16.8 feet by early Thursday evening before dropping.

A day earlier, the National Weather Service had projected the river would get to 18.6 feet, but then revised the crest level down late Tuesday and again Wednesday.

The river got to 17.34 feet just last week, on June 24, well below the 31.12 feet it reached in 2008. But both last week's crest and the one projected for Thursday are in the top 25 river levels in the city's history, Pomeranz said.

The city manager emphasized that the city was changing its plan from the day before for a limited cleanup, and he said the city will pick up damaged trees and other water- and sewer-damaged material as long as items are placed at the curb. There will be no need to follow the standard city policy of cutting wood debris into small pieces for pickup, he said.

'We will be there …” Pomeranz said. 'That's what we are here for.”

Public Works Director Dave Elgin said public works crews still are focused on flood protection as the river approaches its crest, but he said they should be ready to begin debris pickup at the start of next week if the weather cooperates. The cleanup could take a couple of weeks, he said.

Utilities Director Steve Hershner asked residents with water- and sewer-damaged property to register the damage by calling 286-5897 before putting it at the curb for pickup.

Thirty minutes before the city's news conference on Wednesday afternoon, the Linn County Board of Supervisors held a special meeting to decide what it was going to do with storm damage in the county.

In hard-hit Toddville, the supervisors directed the county's Secondary Roads Department crews to conduct a special pickup of debris in Toddville and elsewhere in Monroe Township July 21-July 25.

Ben Merta, secondary roads operations superintendent, told the supervisors that county road crews had between 800 and 1,000 road locations that needed attention because of the storms.

Merta said Toddville also had a 'rat's nest” of entangled debris to be cleaned up.

He and the supervisors settled on the July 21-25 period to do the work.

County inspectors will hand out cards that will allow residents in unincorporated Linn County and in jurisdictions that use the county's planning services to take a load of debris to one of the two Solid Waste Agency landfills free of charge.

The supervisors also said they will make a debris pickup in Viola where residents have begun to deposit storm debris on school property.

In addition, the supervisors discussed and decided against postponing a road construction project on Wright Brothers Boulevard, slated to begin Monday, until a flood-damaged bridge at nearby Fairfax is rebuilt. Fairfax city officials had asked for the delay in the Wright Brothers Boulevard work.

However, the supervisors said county officials had developed a new, shorter detour around both the bridge damage and road project that they thought Fairfax city officials would be willing to live with. Stopping the Wright Brothers Boulevard project would cost extra money and likely cause the work to conflict with the start of school, the supervisors said.