The Cedar River had not flooded in the great flood of 1964. It had not flooded in 1993. The people of Cedar Rapids thought it would never flood. It's flooding now. Interstate 80, the great east-west route from New York City to San Francisco is closed where it crosses the Cedar River about 20 miles east of Iowa City. All that traffic, the trucks, buses and other traffic is being detoured over 100 miles out of its way on U.S. Hwys 61, 20 which are not designed for that volume of traffic. All the highways between the Quad Cities and Muscatine and Iowa City and points west are flooded and closed. How long will they be closed? The rivers that are flooding have not even crested yet.
If your house is not flooded, if you have electricity, if you can get to your job and everywhere else you need to go by your normal routes, then you have a lot to be thankful for.
We are living in interesting times. Rivers we assumed would never flood are flooding. What are some other things you have always assumed will never fail -- the U.S. dollar, our banking system, our ability to grow food, the freedoms guaranteed us in our Constitution?
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