Cedar Rapids cancels school ahead of flood

And Iowa's second-largest city is working to apply the lessons officials learned after the record 2008 flood.

Entire neighborhoods and the downtown area were largely abandoned as residents in low-lying areas heeded the city's call to evacuate. The latest numbers from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as of 5:00 a.m., have the river cresting at 23 feet at 1:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

"It's crunch time in Cedar Rapids", Mayor Ron Corbett told residents and reporters on Monday. City leaders say people who remain in their homes rather than evacuate could endanger emergency workers if they need to be rescued from their homes once the flooding starts.

"The next 48 hours are the most critical". Officials said they were working to fix the sewer line quickly. Now the city is waiting on Congress to authorize and appropriate the federal share of a plan to build the system along with investments from the state and the city. Iowa's members of Congress are expected to push for the financing in the coming days.

When the river rose to major flood stage in 2008, the city suffered more than $2 billion in damages, whotv.com reported.

Flood waters are receding in some locations of northeast Iowa while still rising in others. The city is asking people to stay out of North Cedar Falls unless they are a resident of the area, or helping a resident with cleanup.

Gail Loskill said police believe about half of the 3,400 residential and 550 commercial parcels in the zone have been evacuated.

State emergency officials issued a news release Friday evening tallying the damage across a number of western counties.

Waterloo has closed several storm sewer floodgates, activated lift stations and put up flood control walls at several spots downtown.

At Cedar Rapids, the Cedar River is expected to crest at 23 feet Monday night - 11 feet above flood stage. Water levels in those two cities were slightly lower than had been expected, but they still reached levels that were second only to the 2008 flood that devastated the region. That year, the Cedar River crested at 32 feet. "They said she is just going to have to swim to shore" on her own.

On Sunday morning, more than 100 volunteers helped remove the seats from the restored Paramount Theater in Cedar Rapids and move them up to the second floor to protect them from floodwaters.