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American Morning

Ten Iowa Counties Under Disaster Proclamations

Aired April 18, 2001 - 11:21   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Twenty -- almost 21 minutes after the hour. We're now back to our other top story of the day, the flooding that's been plaguing the upper Midwest. Disaster proclamations have been issued now for 10 counties in Iowa.

That state's governor, Thomas Vilsack joins us now on the phone from Des Moines. He's got the latest now on the situation in Iowa.

Governor, what you can tell us right now how things look in your state?

GOV. THOMAS VILSACK (D), IOWA: Well, Leon, we're bracing for a tough weekend. It looks as if the Mississippi is going to crest in a number of our communities this weekend probably at or above record levels, so...

HARRIS: Worse than '97 even?

VILSACK: Worse than '97 and worse than '93, which was a real tough year for our state. We've got six agencies of state government working hard with volunteers trying to sandbag and put plastic rolls all over the place in an effort to try to stem the tide of the Mississippi, but, as you can tell, it's -- it's a difficult task.

HARRIS: Yeah, we're going to -- if -- if we can put that map back up that we had up a moment ago. Governor, I'd like to have you describe for our viewers how widespread this flooding is going to be.

VILSACK: Well, for our state, of course, our Eastern border borders along the Mississippi, and it -- it really starts in the Dubuque area, which is one of our major metropolitan areas, and goes all the way down to Keokuk, which is in the southern tip of our state. We're going to experience flooding and difficulties for homes and businesses all along that route.

So it's -- it's quite a distance, and it's stretching our resources very thin at this time.

HARRIS: Well, what do you -- resource-wise, what do you have right now, and what do you need?

VILSACK: Well, right now, we need people. We have the Department of Corrections, the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Transportation, our Emergency Management Division, our National Guard working with local folks to try to put hundreds of thousands of sandbags in appropriate locations to try to reduce the damage and the impact.

It's just a race against time. You know, it was a very tough winter for us. We didn't have the normal thaw, and as result, we're getting essentially all of this water at one time.

HARRIS: Now is this water that's hitting your area -- is this all coming from rain or from snow melt-off?

VILSACK: It's a combination of both, but it's primarily the snow melt-off, which was not allowed to thaw because of the cold, hard winter we had.

During January, we usually have a thaw, which -- which basically takes a part of this through the process early. That didn't occur, and so, as a result, we're getting it all at one -- one fell swoop.

HARRIS: Wow. Does that mean double-whammy for the farmers in your start?

VILSACK: Not so much the farmers. This is going to -- this is going to impact predominantly the -- the industrial, commercial, and residential areas in these highly populated communities.

We've taken some steps in the past with the construction of some flood walls in some these locations to mitigate the damage that we're going to have, but, you know, when it gets to record levels, there's not a whole lot you can do.

HARRIS: I was going to ask you about that. You said you went through this in '97 and in '93. How about the lessons you learned in each of those instances? We've been...

VILSACK: Well...

HARRIS: ... talking to other people in other states who have said they've had their houses put up or they've reinforced their dikes and raised them.

VILSACK: It is really is about mitigation. You learn from each experience, and, you know, one of the things that we learned what was the necessity of having flood walls being constructed. Keokuk, for example, will probably not have hundreds of millions of dollars of commercial and industrial property jeopardized because of the construction of a flood wall after the '93 flood.

So we'll learn from this experience as to where we need to focus resources in the future.

HARRIS: Any idea how many people may end up being displaced because of this?

VILSACK: Well, it's difficult to say. If we do our job, we're going to prevent an awful lot of disruption. The hope is that we'll have minimal disruption of homes and minimal damage to property. It's difficult to say at this point how extensive it's going to be until the river crests and we determine how long it's going to stay at that level.

HARRIS: Well...

VILSACK: Our hope is this weekend will -- will be the beginning of the end of this process.

HARRIS: Well, right now, you've got people from across the country, maybe even around the world, who are watching your plight. Is there anything, any message you'd like to send out to the federal government about what you might need here?

VILSACK: Well, we -- we did receive some phone calls and some help from the federal government. I mean, they're there to help us, and the Emergency Management folks at the federal level have always done a great job.

We're very hearty folks, and we're going to do everything we can to deal with this, but, at the end of it, they'll probably need --- there will be need for some additional resources from the federal government, and we hope that they'll be responsive and react.

HARRIS: Well, considering the number of states involved here, the federal government resources may even be, in a word, swamped this time around.

VILSACK: Well -- but we've -- we've been through this before, and '93 was a devastating time for our state and for the Midwest. We're going to get through this because we've got a lot of hardworking folks making sure that our damage are mitigated.

HARRIS: Well, you know -- you're right about one thing. We have learned in the last few day that you have some really hardy folks up there, and we certainly wish you and all of them a lot of luck in containing this disaster. Governor Thomas Vilsack in Iowa. Thanks much. And good luck to you, sir.

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