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American Morning

Iowa Flooding to Impact Homes and Businesses

Aired April 24, 2001 - 11:12   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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, as we've been telling you, the Mississippi continues to rise in Eastern Iowa, and there's no letup in efforts to keep the floodwaters out of homes and businesses.

And joining us by phone now to talk more about the flooding in his state is Iowa Governor Thomas Vilsack. He's in Des Moines.

Governor, thanks for being with us.

GOV. TOM VILSACK (D), IOWA: You bet.

PHILLIPS: Could you describe the conditions that you're witnessing right now? What's it like where you are?

VILSACK: Well, it's a particularly difficult time for our state. Flooding basically involves three separate phases.

The first phase is the anticipation of rising waters, and then the second phase is coping with the cresting of the waters, which is where we are now in most of our Iowa communities, and the final phase is the cleanup that occurs after the waters have gone back down to normal levels.

It's going to be a massive cleanup. We've got 1,200 to 1,300 homes that have been impacted and affected. We have numerous businesses. Obviously, a great disruption of business and personal life along the Mississippi. It's a tough time.

PHILLIPS: Governor, type of hit are you going to take with regard to your economy?

VILSACK: Well, it's -- it's obviously going to be devastating for the businesses that have been -- have had their businesses interrupted. Our hope is that we can ask the -- for assistance from the federal government to access small business loans to allow us to sort of deal with this problem over a longer period of time in transition back to prosperity.

This comes at a time when we're coping with difficult revenues at the state level as well as -- farm prices still are not as strong as we'd like them to be. So it's a tough time.

PHILLIPS: How many counties have you now declared disaster areas? VILSACK: Well, we took action quickly recognizing that the river's -- was going to -- river was going to cause a problem, and we declared 10 counties disaster areas. So we've allowed six state agencies' personnel and equipment to assist volunteers and the wonderful folks of Eastern Iowa to try to hold the waters back. Sometimes we've been successful, and other times, obviously, we've not been able to prevent the Mississippi from doing damage.

PHILLIPS: Can you sort of guesstimate how much federal aide you think Iowa will need to get through this flood?

VILSACK: Well, it's pretty difficult at this point in time to estimate because we don't know exactly the -- the extent of the damage that will be -- that will be calculated, but I can assure you that it will be, you know, obviously millions of dollars, and our hope is that we can rely on the federal government, as the government has come in the past to help us out.

Our hope is also that over time, we can look at mitigation opportunities so that we can prevent this, although I will say that Iowa's been hit with three 100-year floods in the last 20 years or 30 years. So perhaps we need to recalculate what a hundred-year flood means.

PHILLIPS: Well, you had a bad one back in 1993, too.

VILSACK: That's right.

PHILLIPS: How prepared do you think you were for this one? Had you made some changes?

VILSACK: Much -- much better prepared. Many of the communities had constructed flood walls or devices to hold the water back. A couple of communities still have not made those decisions, and so, obviously, in Davenport in particular, that -- that will be reviewed, I'm sure, by local officials, and a determination will be made whether or not a flood wall or floodgates or some kind of mitigation strategy ought to be put in place.

PHILLIPS: That's right. Davenport didn't have a sea wall, right?

VILSACK: That's correct.

PHILLIPS: So what do you think's going to happen now?

VILSACK: Well, Davenport relies to a great extent on its access to the Mississippi for economic opportunity, and they have built a revitalized downtown plan based upon their access to the river. So they've going to have to take a look at how the economic impact of a flood wall will be, what it will do to their plans, and whether they can change plans. That's, obviously, a decision that the local folks are going to have to make.

PHILLIPS: Yeah. A lot of tough decisions to make. Governor Thomas Vilsack, thanks for being with us today. And good luck, sir. LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Boy, I'll tell you something. We've heard this a number of times about these hundred-year floods. We were talking to folks in Mississippi about it, and they all thought -- I'm sorry. Not Mississippi. Minnesota.

PHILLIPS: Minnesota.

HARRIS: We talked about that last week with them. Same thing in Iowa. And they all say the same thing. "We just saw that three years ago. We're not supposed to have another one for another 97 years, but they keep coming back."

PHILLIPS: Have that talk with Mother Nature, right, Chad?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, guess what? A hundred years ago, when this set the barrier, a hundred-year flood, there weren't dikes all the way up and down the Mississippi.

HARRIS: Yeah.

MYERS: So some spot up the Mississippi that has a dike now -- maybe the water only would have been a foot deep and it would have spread out a little bit, but now the spread out can't happen. We're keeping it all closed up in this channel, and then when you get to some spot that doesn't have a dike, it just spreads out over there.

So it seems like a hundred-year flood, but even Rock Island -- if didn't have the flood wall on the other side, the water would be half as high in Davenport because that water would spread out. Now, sure, yes, Rock Island would be a little bit flooded too, but there'd be less water and less depth all the way through that area. So you have to keep that in mind.

This hundred-year flood thing changes every time you put up a dike up and down the Mississippi River to keep it either on one side or keep it off the other side. So, yes, it's going to change. And it's going to continue to change all the way through the rest of time, as long as we keep putting up these walls to try to keep the river back. Obviously, the river doesn't want to get back.

Did you ever fly over the Mississippi River? It has been back and forth so many times and changed directions so many times, changed locations so many times, because this river has been flooding longer than we've been alive. That's for sure!

Rain showers all the way up and done the East Coast. But the good news is there's nothing up here in the Central Plains, not rain expected for the next seven days. So, even as we push this ahead to Thursday, no rain at all. Friday, still dry. Saturday, still dry. So, at least, we're not adding to the moisture that's already on the ground. We're not getting any more runoff.

So what you see is what you get. We'll start to get that slow decrease in the levels there at Davenport and all the way down the Mississippi as we start to move through the weekend. That's some good news for the folks there. HARRIS: All right. Good deal. Thanks, Chad. That actually clears that up. That makes a lot of sense. There's not more water. We just have more people, and the...

MYERS: Exactly. And more people affected.

HARRIS: Yeah.

PHILLIPS: Chad had all that background. Very impression. Chad's a man of all trades.

MYERS: I lived in Omaha.

PHILLIPS: There you go.

HARRIS: Ah. So there you go.

PHILLIPS: City planner right there.

HARRIS: All right. Good deal. Thanks, Chad.

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