Hospital Evacuated in the Nick of Time

When floodwater started seeping into the basement of Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the staff knew it was time to get the patients out. That was yesterday afternoon. This morning, muddy water covered the hospital's main entrance and flowed waist-high through the street outside. The Cedar River was rising, and it was engulfing one of Iowa's largest cities. More than 400 city blocks in Cedar Rapids (above) were covered with floodwater; families had been ordered to evacuate more than 3,900 homes; a bridge had collapsed. Shortly after sunrise today, the hospital's power went out. When a hospital loses power, the lives of patients who depend on high-tech machines to keep them alive are in danger. Fortunately, all of Mercy's patients had been moved to other hospitals is the nick of time. Everyone was safe. “I just can’t get over it,” hospital spokesperson Karen Vander Sanden told a reporter for The Gazette as she looked at the water surrounding the empty hospital.

Cedar Rapids was just one city under siege this week from floodwater that has devastated homes, businesses and farms across the upper Midwest. Weeks of heavy rain sent rivers spilling over their banks in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan. Iowa Gov. Chet Culver declared disasters in 83 of Iowa's 99 counties. Nine rivers in his state had reached historic levels. The capital, Des Moines, was threatened by another rising river, and in Iowa City, students at the University of Iowa tried desperately to piles sandbags around their campus buildings to save as many from the rising floodwater as they could.

At a high school that had been turned into an emergency shelter in Cedar Rapids, people cried as they watched their flooded neighborhoods on the TV news. Don Webster held his 4-year-old grandson, Leroy, while talking with a reporter for The Associated Press. Webster expected they would have stay in the school for a few days. After that: "just pray and hope there's something when you go back."

See photos and read more about the flooding at The Gazette.

Photos, top to bottom: AP Images/Jonathan D. Woods-The Gazette; AP Images/The Indianapolis Star, Charlie Nye; AP Images/Jeff Roberson.