Midwest flooding forces evacuations, shutdowns

By Kay Henderson

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - Flooding rivers across Iowa forced residents to evacuate, closed businesses, wrecked stores and shut down highways and barge traffic, authorities said on Thursday.

Iowa Gov. Chet Culver said storm and water damage to infrastructure will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, as dozens of bridges have been damaged or destroyed. Nine rivers were at or near record levels, he said. More rain has been forecast for the coming days.

"It hits everything. Colleges are shut down, stores, it's devastating," said Lisa Fox, vice president of the Iowa Association of Business and Industry.

"Cedar Rapids is completely shut down," she said of Iowa's second-largest city, where dozens of city blocks were flooded and a rail bridge collapsed. "It's going to be a long-term recovery."

At a briefing later on Thursday, an Iowa state official warned Cedar Rapids residents the city of 140,000 was losing its drinking water supply, which comes from several wells. Some 100 city blocks in the city were flooded, the official said.

On top of the marauding floodwaters, deadly tornadoes struck Iowa and neighboring Kansas on Wednesday night, killing six people, including four boys at a Boy Scout camp in Iowa.

"This has been a remarkable onslaught of weather -- everything from flooding, unbelievable rain and of course tornadoes -- all descending at once," Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told reporters near the scout camp.

Chertoff said government relief would be forthcoming and noted the department was also keeping resources in reserve ahead of the onset of hurricane season.

In contrast to recent Midwest tornadoes that have claimed dozens of lives, there were only a few drowning deaths attributed to the flooding in the past week as most residents heeded warnings to evacuate. but the region's economy was battered by the destruction and disruption caused by the flooding.

BARGE TRAFFIC STALLED ON MISSISSIPPI RIVER

Levee failures have forced thousands out of their homes and others piled up sandbags to hold back still-cresting rivers.

A section of a key East-West highway, Interstate 80, will be closed on Friday for several days, and Iowa officials urged truckers to avoid traversing the state. Some 33,000 vehicles use the stretch of road every day.

Several factories were shut down in Iowa and neighboring states either because they lacked power or workers could not reach them.

Among the closures in Iowa was a Deere & Co facility in Waterloo, a Cargill corn processing facility, livestock slaughtering plants operated by Tyson Foods, and several grain elevators and processors.

One of the industries hardest hit was agriculture.