Given the horrific fire at Notre Dame in Paris and all the other news of the moment, it’s hard for slow-moving stories to get coverage — so what does an expanding disaster get? A week ago I posted about the second bomb cyclone weather system to hit the plains states in as many months. Via Solutionary Rail’s Facebook page, I ran across this account, Letter from Langdon in the Daily Yonder. Richard Oswald has a grim report from the Missouri Valley from April 16, 2019:
Now the Missouri Valley is impassable — due to road and bridge damage, and water — from US Hwy 34 near Plattsmouth, Nebraska, and Pacific Junction, Iowa, all the way down to Rulo, Nebraska, and Big Lake Missouri, on US 159. In all, four river crossings in a row are disabled. That also includes Highway 2, which connects Iowa and Nebraska at Nebraska City; and and US 136 in Missouri at the Brownville Nebraska bridge. Those 4 closures leave a 140 mile long transportation gap in the heart of America.
At last check US 59 leading from Missouri into Atchison, Kansas, south of the bridge at St. Joseph, Missouri, and Elwood, Kansas, was also under water.
Adding to the chaos of dislocated travelers looking for ways in or out are hundreds of tractor trailers and dump trucks hauling crushed rock to railroads whose rail lines were damaged by flowing water. That means a flood of trucks running up and down both sides of the river.
No matter how many blinking message boards and warning signs they drive past, some folks still haven’t gotten the memo, like the over the road trucker who flagged me down beside a road closed barricade at Highway 136 and I-29 last week. “Hey man, I don’t mean to bother you but WHERE DO I GO?” he asked. Where did he want to be? “Omaha”.
Well that’s easy. Take 136 to 275. Remember 275 is just a narrow 2 lane. Go north 40 miles through Missouri and Iowa to Glenwood where you hit 34. Take that west to I-29. You can go north from there to I-80 and west into Omaha, Nebraska. But don’t try to go south. I-29 is closed. And don’t try to go west on 34. It’s closed too.
“Thanks, man.”
Don’t thank me, brother. Thank the folks in charge of flood control here in middle America.
Oswald describes life in a disrupted landscape, where government seems at loss to act and funding questions are yet to be answered. He does note one area of rapid response.
Acts of God seem to have nothing on the railroads. The amount of money they’re spending right now is nothing short of biblical. But here in Missouri where the governor awaits word of our disaster or if we even have one, railroads have deployed thousands of workers and millions upon millions of dollars. The local economy, trashed by closed highways and unemployed service workers at restaurants and truck stops, has gotten a partial boost from none other than railroad workers massed at the borders of our flood, doing battle with nature and anyone else who gets in their way.
Flying farmers here have been taking pictures of rotting piles of grain still trapped by the river as the railroad restores tracks nearby. A local grain elevator has 3 million bushels of corn and soybeans jutting up out of the water. Roads to that remain either flooded or impassable. It’s a waiting game. Nearby, just across the tracks, a farmer’s collapsed bin lays next to thousands of wet bushels it once contained. Down the line are more farmers’ ruined grain and bins along with mine.
Read the whole thing. This is what Climate Change looks like. Look for ripples through the food chain. Look for rising bankruptcy rates and increases in suicides. Look for fights in Congress over who gets relief, how much — and follow the money to see where it actually goes and how effectively it gets spent in this age of grifting on a presidential scale.
This is why arguing that the Green New Deal is too expensive is pointless. This is what the future looks like if we remain paralyzed. We have a choice. We can have a future that looks like this, or we can have more of this:
There’s not much evidence of clean up anywhere, so debris clearly identifies where water was, if it’s not still there. Even the scenic drive to Glenwood is marred by abandoned belongings of every description: farm field residue, garbage, tree limbs, and in some cases entire groves of trees in a pile. Some people are finding the remains of hapless livestock caught in the torrent.
And, with warming weather, it’s all starting to stink.
Read all of the Letter from Langdon. Remember it when you hear know-nothings like this making jokes about cow farts. And if you want to do something, there are more and more groups with ways to get going. (One of my particular interests is Solutionary Rail— give them a look if you haven’t yet. Here’s the short video summary.)
If you live in the affected areas, or know people who are, please share your stories in comments.
UPDATE: check out the video in this comment from praesepe. There’s potential for a truly horrendous disaster that could sweep through multiple states.
UPDATE: The Des Moines Register has an account of Congressional hearings in the Senate on the earlier March flooding. Two Republicans at the field hearing seem to be blaming it on the Army Corps of Engineers putting environmental concerns over flood control, Senators Grassley and Ernst.
The damage a month ago was already severe. From the article:
Volunteer firefighters roused senior citizens at the city's affordable housing complex at 3 a.m. on March 18 after a nearby levee breached. They carried them out in nightgowns and pajamas, leaving behind walkers, wheelchairs and all other earthly possessions.
"We didn't have a chance," Crain said, "and we knew it."
The story also has links to videos of the March flooding in Iowa. Climate change did make it into the story — at the bottom.
[Senator]
Gillibrand, who is running for president, attended the hearing as part of a three-day campaign swing through Iowa. She used part of her time to implore government officials to acknowledge the severity of global climate change and invest in prevention efforts rather than solely reacting with disaster assistance.
"There will be a next time. There will be more extreme rainfall," she said. "There will be more extreme weather. Climate change is taking catastrophic events and natural disasters that used to be rare and making them more common. We have to be ready to deal with that."
Ernst later told reporters that the role of climate change is "a conversation that has to occur."
Ernst added that immediate concern has to be disaster relief.
UPDATE: This collection of photos of highway damage shows the scope of damage from March, and only begins to hint at the larger toll.
