A year after son’s death in C.R. flash flooding, father seeks to prevent future tragedies

CEDAR RAPIDS - Today marks the last of a year of firsts for Mark Blake that no one would wish on any parent.

A first Thanksgiving and first Christmas, a first Memorial Day out at his son Logan's grave, and then this month: graduation parties of Logan's Washington High School classmates, his 18th birthday, Father's Day and today.

At about 7:20 p.m. last June 30, 17-year-old Logan Blake was running down an errant Frisbee near a drainage ditch at 27th Street NE next to Arthur Elementary School when a torrent of water from a deluge of rain swept him into a 54-inch storm sewer pipe.

His friend, David Bliss, 17, tried to help, and he, too, was sucked into the sewer. The surge of water carried both in the storm sewer for more than a mile and a half, depositing them in Cedar Lake. Bliss was able to walk to nearby UnityPoint Health-St. Luke's Hospital, but Blake died, found at 4 p.m., July 1, about 75 yards from shore.

As part of the rescue effort, his dad, Mark, walked the sewer line as it gets bigger and bigger on its path to the lake. He is pretty sure his son hit his head on a large concrete beam in the sewer soon after he was washed into it.

He had a mark from a blow to the head when firefighters pulled him from the lake, Blake recalled.

'I don't talk to a lot of people about it,” Blake said. 'And I'm not a big churchgoer. But one of the things I was blessed with through this whole thing that let me know where I was spiritually on this planet was I didn't have to ask why.

'…

I don't have any whys. It just happened, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

But there is something he can do.

Today, Blake will launch a new not-for-profit organization, Project Storm Drain Safety, which he hopes will be there as a prevention education resource and support system for parents, schools and communities that have a storm sewer tragedy or a near miss, or fear they also risk losing a life to an unprotected storm sewer opening.

In addition, in place today is a new storm grate protection system and fence engineered to prevent others from unsuspectingly being washed into the sewer inlet at 27th Street NE at the CEMAR Trail, where Blake's son lost his life.

The protection system has been constructed as part of an unusual agreement between the city and Logan Blake's family, in which the family chose not to sue the city for its loss but instead asked the city to protect the sewer opening.

'I really feel like he's smiling about all this,” Blake said about his deceased son, the new not-for-profit and the sewer protection system. 'We didn't just get over it and move on without at least trying to do something about it. That's kind of what the whole settlement was about.”

In that agreement, the city has installed a primary grate protection system engineered like a ladder set at a gentle incline, so anyone in the drainage ditch would be washed onto the ladder and be able to walk up it to safety. The site also is marked by a chain-link fence and warning signs.

On its own, the city also has examined its storm sewer system and identified four similarly risky storm sewer inlets that are at least 36 inches in diameter, run for at least 100 feet underground and are within 1,000 feet of a school such as the sewer opening near Arthur Elementary School, said Jon Durst, the city's sewer superintendent.

Durst said two of the four already have protections, and the city is now in the process of protecting the two others - one near Harrison Elementary School and one near Hoover Elementary School.

The first grate system is slated for construction this year while the second is in design, he said.

The protection for the sewer that Logan Blake got washed into cost about $50,000, Durst said, and the work at Harrison and Hoover schools will cost a similar amount.

City alerts that used to warn against driving through floodwater now also include a warning to stay away from storm sewer openings - a warning which Blake said he asked the city to include in its citywide alerts.

Blake, as the founder and executive director of Project Storm Drain Safety, is setting up an office at 616 Fourth Ave. SE and will have an online website and Facebook page up and running this week. He is working with Ken MacKenzie, program manager for the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District in Denver, Colo., and stormwater management committee co-chairman of the Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Flood and Stormwater Management Agencies.

Blake's goal is to develop a school curriculum about proper sewer grate design and to help people advocate at city halls for those who want improvements to dangerous storm sewer inlets.

Blake said his son, Logan, was not a fragile teenager when he was sucked into the sewer a year ago. Instead, he was physically fit and had been toying with the idea as he prepared to enter his senior year at Washington High School of joining the National Guard when he graduated.

At the same time, he said his son understood the value of service, 'of looking outside himself” and of wanting to help make things better. He had done that in his service job at the Cottage Grove Place retirement community.

'We are trying to do what we think he would want to do,” said Blake. 'And I think this is exactly what he would have wanted to do if the cards had been somewhere else.”