By Jim Ecker
The Gazette
 AP Photo An aerial view of a neighborhood in Iowa is seen a day after a tornado struck last month. This year is already the deadliest for tornadoes since 1998, the National Weather Service says. |
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Chad Ware helped with the recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita devastated cities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas in 2005, but those disaster sites were a long way from Iowa and he arrived after the storms had done their damage.
“I always wondered what those people went through during the storm,” Ware said.
He found out during the Floods of 2008.
Ware, a nurse at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, is a member of a federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team that rushes around the country to help people who have been struck by natural disasters. Most recently, all he had to do was turn around.
The floodwaters from the Cedar River reached him June 12 when he was on duty in the emergency room at Mercy Medical Center. It led to a 26-hour shift that left him exhausted, proud and impressed with the human spirit to help others and cope with emergencies.
Patients had to be evacuated from Mercy and shipped to other hospitals and medical centers in Iowa, with many patients transferred to St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids.
“The patients stayed in good spirits,” said Ware, 37, who lives in Walker. “They would laugh, they would smile, they understood what was going on throughout the whole process.” Jeff Rehnke, an emergency medical technician and a volunteer firefighter in Solon, spent about 20 days in Louisiana and Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina with the federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team. It was an experience he’ll never forget.
“I had never seen the damage a hurricane could do. It was pretty devastating,” he said Thursday.
Parts of Eastern Iowa have been devastated by the Flood of 2008, but Rehnke thinks Iowans responded admirably to their problems, for the most part. He’s not sure that was always the case down south.
“In my opinion, more folks up here were willing to reach out and help right away,” he said. “I think Iowa is a tightknit community.” The floodwaters have receded in Cedar Rapids and people are tackling the cleanup efforts. It took much longer down south.
“Not to make light of what we have up here,” said Rehnke, 38, who lives in Solon, “but the overall sheer volume was much greater down there. The people of Iowa are already looking ahead.” Rehnke said government officials, relief workers and residents of affected areas have learned valuable lessons from previous disasters like Hurricane Katrina. The response time is faster, and people tend to pay attention when warnings are issued.
When people were told to evacuate the Floods of 2008, most of them packed up and moved.
“People listened to it better, because they realized we were doing it for a reason,” said Rehnke. “I think it saved a lot of heartache. The hardship was greatly avoided from being trapped in a house or building.” The Rev. Bob David, who lives in Mount Vernon, was part of a group from the First Presbyterian Church in Ely that went to East Grand Forks, Minn., to help with relief efforts after the Red River Flood of 1997 in North Dakota and Minnesota. The basement of the Presbyterian Church in East Grand Forks was flooded, and there was damage to other parts of the building.
“It was a lot like what Cedar Rapids is going through now,” he said.
“We did a lot of cleanup at the church,” he said. “They were tearing walls out and mopping up and rebuilding walls. It took a couple of years, but they’re Midwesterners up there like we are here, and they persevered and got the church repaired.
“It’s pretty grimy work,” said David, 47, who now serves the First Presbyterian Church in Mount Pleasant. “The kids we took up there had never seen anything like that. It’s a little bit overwhelming, because there’s so much to do.
“We knew a lot of hands coming together and lot of people working together would help those people recover, and they have.”