June 17, 2008 9:45PM

A Sad, But Honest Admission

By Jeff Flock

I’ve covered most of the big floods and every major hurricane of the past 25 years and my experience is that despite our best efforts, the coverage never fully conveys how bad it is.

We can give you the numbers, like the 9 square miles and 1300 blocks of Cedar Rapids under water. We can broadcast a live tour of a flood victim’s house as we did today. Or, like we did earlier this week along the Mississippi, we can walk in chest deep water and describe the scene.

But nothing is like being here and drinking in the 360 degree all sensory experience…surrounded by block after block of flood debris…the smell of what amounts to rottiing water….the “eerie” feeling you get driving into a downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa and not seeing a single light in any building.

Still, We Try

Today, downtown Cedar Rapids, bisected by the still swollen Cedar River, is a hive of activity. Trucks with “Floodmasters” and other disaster recovery firm logos…yellow-booted men with white helmets and t shirts with the words “Catastrophy Team” on the back are laboring to dry downtown Cedar Rapids.

Today we were outside Joe McGrath’s house as he drove up for his first look since the flood. I helped him pry open the front door, swelled from the water. He may wish it was still closed. A solid brick house, the inside is a total loss. One of the 3900 harmed in some way.

Later in the downtown I met Steve Emerson. He owns 10 buildings in the Cedar Rapids downtown which, I joked, makes him the Donald Trump of Iowa. But this Donald wears a t-shirt and shorts and stacks his own sandbags. And he may have a better relationship with his bankers than Trump. They are suspending his loan payments for three months because of the flood. If only Wall Street operated like Iowa.

Our work may not be able to convey exactly what it’s like to be in what I suspect will one day be called “The great flood of 2008. But we’ll keep trying.