It's Different Here

A Reflection on the 2024 Flood in NW Iowa (and beyond)

Over the weekend, my little corner of creation experienced catastrophic flooding. We went to bed on Friday night knowing that we could wake to water, but instead Saturday morning dawned on our world transformed. Friends and family were startled awake in the middle of the night by emergency workers pounding on their doors. In the time it took them to grab their children and a literal handful of essentials, the water was waist-deep in their homes. Levees were breached, roads and bridges washed away, and 21 counties in Iowa are currently under a disaster proclamation. Thousands have been displaced as their homes and livelihoods were destroyed.

It’s hard to know what to say in the face of such devastation. But Iowans sure know what to DO. Emergency shelters (local gyms and churches) have been inundated with donations. Someone started a Google Spreadsheet where people who have extra beds can leave their information for evacuees. Texts for help have resulted in friends, family, and strangers abandoning everything to start the cleanup process as waters recede, and volunteers are pouring into the ravaged communities.

What follows is a sort of aching cry, a kind-of poem, a journal entry that captures a small snippet of what this catastrophe looks and feels like for the people on the ground. Thanks for reading.

The skyscrapers look different around here.

But in the slanting morning light, the small town pulses with people. Volunteers queue up to sign their names on clipboards for FEMA, and we hand out water bottles, gloves, masks, and instructions. Head down Main Street. Once you hit 15th the real damage starts. Jump in.

Some are here to help family and friends, others have come to do whatever they can for whoever needs it most. Everyone needs it most. The residential streets look like a war zone. A car full of college-aged girls in muck boots and tank tops pulls up. A couple in their eighties. A mom with two little kids who are all ready to sort clothes or serve food. There are no age limits and no requirements beyond a pair of willing hands.

More gloves are delivered and we cheer. A nurse in an ATV lines up a group of early twenty-somethings who have been knee-deep in filth and gives them all tetanus shots. Someone makes the rounds with iced coffees for volunteers and another person fires up a grill and starts flipping hamburgers. We send a man who is dehydrated and vomiting to the IV station.

Down the side streets, homes are marked with red spray paint, Xs and Os, but no one seems to know what the symbols mean. Soaked carpet, mud-black furniture, appliances that show the dirty water line—five feet, more. Garbage lines the streets. It’s hard to separate the truth from rumors. A man stands alone in his driveway, head in his hands.

A Red Cross volunteer tells my husband: “It’s different here. The community comes together in a way that is really extraordinary. I know it’s tough, but you don’t know how good you have it.”

We do.

The skyscrapers look different around here, and so do we. Disaster makes us family, and boy do we know how to love each other well. I weep for my brothers and sisters who are walking this impossibly difficult road, but I’m grateful down to my bones for the tangible reminder that we belong to each other. Northwest Iowa, your true character is showing. You shine.

Friends, please keep our flood ravaged communities in your prayers. It’s going to take a long time to rebuild. xoxo - Nicole

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