Tornadoes compound Midwest flood misery

'We just need it to stop raining'
Volunteers from a nearby community college gave up football practice to fill sandbags, hoping to shore up the levee near the town’s hydroelectric damn.

“We just need it to stop raining,” City Manager David Fierke said. “If it doesn’t rain anymore, we’ll be fine, and we really don’t need this extra work, but that’s not what the weather service is telling us.”

Officials in town along the Des Moines River alerted residents that they may have to evacuate.

“The river is out of its banks, and there’s no holding it back now,” said Tom Heinold of the Army Corps of Engineers. “It’s going to do what it wants.”

Water contamination feared
NBC affiliate KWWL of Waterloo reported that so much raw sewage had seeped into water supplies that Black Hawk County officials officials issued warnings not to drink or cook with it.

“Kids like to play in it, and it can be fun, but it can be risky, especially if they have cuts or abrasions, broken skin,” said county Health Director Tom O’Rourke. “We advise that persons should treat all flood water as if it is chemically contaminated and capable of causing infectious diseases.”

Less rain was expected farther north, allowing flood victims to begin trying to piece their lives back together.

Roger Colbenson of Rushford, Minn., told NBC affiliate KIMT of Sioux City, Iowa, that his home, along with his $200,000 collection of baseball cards and comic books, was destroyed.

“We couldn’t believe what we were seeing,” Colbenson said. “We did take pictures when we went in, and believe it or not, I broke down about six times. It’s everything we worked for, gone.”

Along with dealing with the mess in the homes, authorities reported outbreaks of looting in empty houses. Fillmore County imposed a curfew, ordering all residents out of Rushford by 9 p.m.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he and legislative leaders had agreed to call a special session sometime next month to hammer out flood relief for southeastern parts of the state.

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