Flooding again: Not the anniversary we had in mind

This wasn't the anniversary we had in mind.

Five years after the historic 2008 floods in Eastern Iowa, we wanted to take a step back and remember. Reflect. Celebrate our progress and rededicate ourselves to the work left outstanding.

Instead, this week found us sandbagging, nail biting, evacuating, helping our neighbors and holding our breath as the waters kept rising. Again.

It was small consolation that we've been through this before. That we're better prepared. That this time it might not be so bad. Our experts have more tools today to make more accurate flooding predictions than they did in 2008, and we hung on every revision:

In Cedar Rapids, a crest of 20 feet, still a big one, but not the record 31. In Johnson County, river levels up there among the highest recorded. They think the water will top the Coralville Lake emergency spillway by the middle of next week. Still, it all depends on the rain.

So much of it felt familiar: Flood barriers going up, low-lying buildings emptying out. “Here we go again,” a friend of mine posted to Facebook, offering her truck to help folks moving to higher ground. Over at the University of Iowa, they shut the doors on arts campus buildings that were hard-hit just a few short years ago. In towns like Vinton, Tama, Manchester and Dunkerton, disaster workers already arrived.

It was all too clear, the work that's yet to be finished. In Coralville, where a federal funding holdup has stalled construction of a levee that would contain flooding from Clear Creek, officials put up temporary barriers, instead. But it was clear, too, the lessons we've learned, even if the final accounting will have to come once the flood has come and gone.

Instead of casually reflecting on all the improvements we've made over the past five years - the storm system upgrades and temporary flood walls and emergency responses and personal plans - we'll be putting them to the test. A heck of a way to commemorate an anniversary.

“What can we do about it? Nothing really,” that Facebook friend wrote. “If our peeps and family are safe that is all that counts.”

That might be the biggest lesson that we took from 2008 - the fact that we'll get through this.

As nerve-wracking and unwelcome as this week's weather has been, whatever the damage ahead, we'll make it out all right.

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