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Mat Tanner, a recruiter with the U.S. Navy, pilots a boat through a flooded street Friday, June 13, 2008, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
By AMY LORENTZEN – 16 hours ago
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) — Rising water from the Cedar River forced the evacuation of a downtown hospital Friday after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 400 city blocks were under water.
In Des Moines, 100 miles to the southwest, officials issued a voluntary evacuation order for much of downtown and other areas bordering the Des Moines River. Mayor Frank Cownie said the evacuations were an attempt “to err on the side of citizens and residents.”
Des Moines is Iowa’s capital and largest city, with about 190,000 residents. But the hardest-hit was Cedar Rapids, a city of 124,000 people.
Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state’s 99 counties to be state disaster areas, and nine rivers were at or above historic flood levels. Elsewhere in the upper Midwest, rivers and streams tipping their banks forced evacuations, closed roads, and even threatened drinking water.
The hospital’s 176 patients, including about 30 patients in a nursing home facility at the hospital, were being evacuated to other hospitals in the region. The evacuation started late Thursday night and continued Friday morning in the city of 124,000 residents.
“Some are frail and so it’s a very delicate process with them,” said Karen Vander Sanden, a hospital spokeswoman.
Water was seeping into the hospital’s lower levels, where the emergency generator is located, said Dustin Hinrichs of the Linn County emergency operations center.
“They proactively and preventatively started evacuation basically guessing on the fact they were going to lose power,” he said.
Dave Koch, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids fire department, said the river will crest Friday at about 31.8 feet. It was at 30.9 feet early in the morning. In a 1993 flood, considered the worst flood in recent history, it was at 19.27 feet.

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