Flood of '08: Railroad bridge R.I.P.

Yeah, we have one less bridge in the city of Cedar Rapids as of three hours ago. Now we finally have pictures of it, again thanks to the fine folks at Gazette Online.


This is the bridge as of a couple hours ago. More of it has collapsed since then, and all those railroad cars are now underwater. This has created a major rapids situation over downtown and left the southwest side of town under several feet of water.

This will be my last update for a couple hours at least. I am going to attempt to get some sleep finally. I may very well go back to my job later tonight (take that, day off!) as many of my coworkers may not be able to make it though to their job.

Keep praying with everyone in the Cedar Rapids and eastern Iowa area. This is far from over.

Flood of '08: Downtown fading fast

Well, just a couple hours ago I was wondering how well downtoown Cedar Rapids might be hit by the rising water. The local power company, Alliant, is slowly taking on water and it has shut down the power for the city. Levels are covering the steet now as seen in the picture below:

This is about 2 and a half blocks from my job, 3 and a half blocks from the downtown library, 8 or 9 blocks from the now powerless main post office levels.

Now the water services in the city are also becoming strained as the city fights to avoid any sewage backup in to drinking water.

City hall is even gone and the downtown prisoners are being moved to the nearest prison facility as the jail is underwater. My house went without powers for about two hours as energy levels are rerouted to keep dangerous transformer damage.

Reports coming in now say we have already reached the previously predicted crest of 24.5 feet (12.5 feet above flood level) without reaching crest yet.

Below is a look at the bridges in downtown Cedar Rapids. The railroad bridge downtown is already gone, washed away despite several tons of extra weight holding it down. Most likely all downtown bridges will be gone by later today.

Normally these bridges run a good twenty to thirty feet over the Cedar River.

Right now, it can be best described as a damn mess.

Currently we are holding out at my house right off Mt. Vernon Rd about a mle and a half from downtown. These photos send shivers down my side as I look at them and I fear it will only get worse. Thankfully, my daughter is currently visiting the town of Traer where her grandparents, my folks, live. We had planned to go get her just before Father’s Day, and that is looking less and less likely as the water levels continue to rise.

It is terrible out there right now, but the people of Cedar Rapids are fighting as hard as they can to keep the damage from spreading. But with the water levels still rising, it is anyone’s guess as to how long we can hold out.

Flood of '08: Disaster Watch

So I haven’t written much on this blog for the last couple months as I am still considering how to reformat it for my slowly developing revised version of Metahuman Press. None of that really matters right now as I have something more important I thought I would chronicle.

Welcome to the second “500 Year Flood” in Iowa history. Now don’t get me wrong, I am no expert, but I am pretty sure that 500 Year Floods are supposed to occur only every 500 years or so. And unless my math is pretty bad, it's only been fifteen. Yeah, just checked on my computer. Definitely 2008, not 2493.

Anyway, large portions of several cities have already been washed away. Cedar Falls, Waterloo, and smaller towns like New Hartford and Palo are gone. Others like Iowa City, Coralville, and my own Cedar Rapids are just entering the danger zone.

Record rain levels are to blame. We have already surpassed the crest level from 1993 and it is only going to get worse over the next day or two, even as it continues to rain outside.

Downtown, where I work for UrRelay, has been evacuated. Relay call centers cannot shut down without possibly losing their license. So we’ve all went to college. Mt. Mercy College to be exact. Servers, computers, people, extras, everything that we could need have found their way from a full-sized facility downtown and in to a one class room operation at the collge. It’s; cramped, messy, downright insane, but functional nonetheless.

Water levels are only going to keep rising as the rain falls. Pray for all the fine folks in the errors evacuating.

Random chunks of thought spewed on to the internet

Yeah, it’s been a bit since I actually threw out a nice little post about what’s up in my little world. My wife and I have been enjoying a week of blissful quiet as our darling daughter is now spending a week at Grandma’s house for her spring break. I love having these visits a few times a year because they really give me a breather from the whole parenthood thing. Sometimes you just need time away from the rugrat, y’know?

Her absence has given me some extra free time and I have used it to finish crafting the next Timeline story. I am really proud of this one as it plays off African myths to introduce the second major African hero in the Quadrant universe (after Bagheera in Epsilon). He is a fella named Sagai (Swahili for spear) and he will be a player in a few of my stories in the near future starting with the aforementioned Epsilon. I already have my next time line project in the works. It will be a ongoing story introducing heroes in the dark days of the early 90’s, where metahumans were hated and feared by all. It will be a connected epic, and every other Timeline will continue the 90’s saga. I’m not sure what story I will follow that one up in, but after Sagai (in April) and the 90’s (in July) I will have some time to think about it.

I have a new Living Legends and a new Mean Streets both up today. Living Legends is coming along nicely and you can expect it to start kicking in to the action phase in the next few months. Mean Streets has had a couple short chapters of late, but 3.4 amps things up and starts the build towards bigger and better things.

Having the laptop at work is given me way more time to write and now that I am gaining a nice lead time on my current stories, I am also hard at work on finishing Champion City book one and book two, hopefully by summer’s end. Expect a book edition of volume one while the second volume will find its way up on Metahuman Press. I also have plans to get My Name is Charon back with a new storyline and another new series that started its life as a submission to the Shadowline create a superheroine contest. More on that later.

Speaking of that contest, the five finalists have finally been announced, and I have to say I am a bit disappointed. None of them seem like the kind of characters I am going to have a lot of interest in. Hope is probably the most intriguing concept, but even it seems somewhat flat. I submitted four projects to this contest and I would rate at least three of them more innovative than these. Color me disappointed I guess. Anyone who wants can vote on that link, but you got to join the site to do so. I don’t really know if its worth the effort IMHO (although I probably will just to continue my support of indy superheroes).

Well, enough ranting for now. I will try to keep the personal and project updates a little more frequent if possible, but you know me. I suck at this regular blog stuff.

Superhero fiction review: Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

Somehow I missed this book’s debut last year, and it’s a shame. While not any kind of classic piece of literature, Soon I Will Be Invincible is definitely a capable piece of fiction that delves deep in to the psyches of megalomaniacal villain Dr. Impossible and confused cyborg heroine Fatale. Grossman does this ably with a chapter by chapter revolving first person narrative between the two characters. Both delve in to their past accomplishments and failures while Impossible secures his latest plans and Fatale teams with her companions in the New Champions in an effort to stop him. The two narrators are original and engaging, and the other characters in the book twist around the usual Justice League stand-ins.

All in all though, Soon I Will Be Invincible becomes little more than a well told superhero tale without anything to make it a deeper piece of fiction. But what a super-tale it tells! Recommended.