Iowa Responder Remembers and Reflects 

A tornado...then a massive flood hit Iowa in late May and early June of 2008. The initial Federal Coordinating Officer for the declared disaster, Bill Vogel, describes the incredible amount of tornado damage he first saw in Parkersburg and the flood damaged 1300 city blocks in Cedar Rapids. 


Bill Vogel, Federal Coordinating Officer: 
It was an incredible amount of debris and damage that I the first saw when I approached the town of Parkersburg.  An F5 tornado had touched down in Parkersburg  on the 25th of May in 2008 and proceeded along the ground worked its way down to New Hartford caused significant damage in New Hartford. I had requested a mobile disaster recovery vehicle to be able to provide me with some communications capability because we had nothing to use. I initially operated out of my rental vehicle with my computer air computer card and cell phone. (Water sounds)  Unfortunately though immediately following the terrible tornado it started to rain in the first week of June and continued to rain throughout that entire week.  The river started to rise very rapidly and during the period of time from the tenth to about the fifteenth of June the water was severely high throughout the entire southern and central corridor in Iowa. Both the Cedar River and the Iowa River were of well over flood stage and causing some severe flooding throughout the state and the 1300 city blocks of Cedar Rapids were inundated with water. So the emergency responders did an outstanding job making sure that people were safely evacuated and moved to a safe area. My overall evaluation of the initial response was that it was outstanding and the partnership that we developed with Iowa to be able to make sure that all of those needs were met was outstanding.  Everybody that I talked to was very eager to work together as a team.   It didn't make any difference whether it was at the local city state or federal level people understood what the needs were.  People took immediate action in order to be able to meet those needs and my overall valuation of the response effort was it was very very well done.

For more information, visit www.fema.gov