Floods

The news coming out of Iowa is scary.



(AP Photo/Steve Pope)

Via Digby, this story from AP

Rising water from the Cedar River forced the evacuation of a downtown hospital Friday after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 400 city blocks were under water.

In Des Moines, 100 miles to the southwest, officials issued a voluntary evacuation order for much of downtown and other areas bordering the Des Moines River. Mayor Frank Cownie said the evacuations were an attempt "to err on the side of citizens and residents."

Des Moines is Iowa's capital and largest city, with about 190,000 residents. But the hardest-hit was Cedar Rapids, a city of 124,000 people.

Here's a video report from Reuters:



And via Andrew Sullivan, this story from Oil Guy at DailyKos:

Not only is the Obama campaign helping to raise money for the relief effort, the websites Community Blogs are providing information on where volunteers who live in or near the affected areas are needed to assist local residents in building sandbag levees to protect peoples' homes. They had specific information on what towns needed help and where volunteers should go to offer their help. This included an appeal for volunteers to bring cold bottled water for the folks working at sandbagging - it is grueling hard work and the floods have contaminated many of the local water supplies.

I am amazed that this story is not getting more attention in both the blogoshere and the media. When is the last time a Presidential Campaign devoted its resources to a relief effort of this kind? What a beautiful way to put the "Peolpe Power" of the Obama supporters to work.

He notes that Obama will be sandbagging in Quincy, Illinois this weekend. Just think about that for a minute -- go ahead, compare and contrast to Bush's reaction to Katrina, and go see if there's anything on McCain's website. (As of this posting, the only acknowledgment of the disaster is a two-line statement of the standard "Our prayers go out. . . ." variety. Obama's site has a front-page story, a call for volunteers, and a link to the Red Cross.)

And, when it comes right down to it, which of the two is more likely to give a damn about regular people? I'm really waiting for some vacuous columnist from a right-wing rag to come up again with the idea that Obama doesn't connect with "real Americans" or that he has to prove his "Americanness." (So, Ms. Noonan, when are you heading to Cedar Rapids to help out?)



(Photo: Scott Olson/Getty)