For Summer Rep, the shows go on

When Dave McGraw last saw the David Thayer Theatre at the UI Theatre Building, thousands of costumes hung from the rigging, mute witnesses above the vacant stage. “When we closed up the space, it was a little eerie, but also kind of serene to see that wave of costumes stretch up to the ceiling,” he says.

Theatre students, faculty, and staff had just cleared costume and prop collections from the basement in four and a half hours—30 minutes quicker than back in the summer of 1993. The Department of Theatre Arts’ experience with the earlier flood had taught them to think and move fast once the river started to rise.

The creeping waters also forced the question of whether Iowa Summer Repertory Theatre—the department’s annual series showcasing the work of a featured playwright with full-scale productions and staged readings—could go on.

“We were at odds about whether we should continue,” says McGraw, a lecturer and production manager who has worked on Summer Rep for five years. “We knew it would be hard to go to rehearsal knowing everything that was happening outside.”

But tonight “Wonder of the World” opens at Iowa City West High School, the substitute site that’s welcomed Summer Rep. Performances of the play and other works by featured writer David Lindsay-Abaire continue through July.

West High also played host to several hundred National Guard troops who bunked in the gym, as well as the congregation of Parkview Church, who continue to share the auditorium with the UI theatre company. (“We've been spiffing up their lighting a little bit, I think,” McGraw says.)

The overnight move to a new venue was fairly seamless. “Many of us come from touring backgrounds, “ McGraw says. “It was a huge group effort, but it hearkened back to the days when you’d put everything on a truck and away you’d go, not sure where you’d wind up next.”

Of course it hasn’t all been easy. Some cast and crew rushed out to sandbag in the morning, then came to rehearsal. Many know folks who’ve been displaced from their homes. Though guardedly optimistic, none are sure what they’ll find once they return to the Theatre Building.

All are determined to put on a show, however, if only to offer weary, worried audiences a break. Last night, they performed a free preview open to the public.

“When we started rehearsals in May, our artistic director Eric Forsythe said all these shows concerned people coping with extraordinary circumstances, people just trying to get through the day,” McGraw says. “It’s an appropriate season for this year, because our world seems pretty messed up. But the sun keeps rising.”

At the DI, the news keeps flowing

As the Iowa River rose, crested, and gradually receded, members of the University of Iowa community and Iowa City metro area hungered for the latest news.

The Daily Iowan, the University’s student-produced newspaper, wasn’t about to stop the presses, even though floodwaters forced these journalists and staff members from their state-of-the-art home.

More than two dozen people—full-time staff, their family members, and many students from the newsroom—worked painstakingly on Friday, June 13, to evacuate the DI office, located on the first floor of the Adler Journalism and Mass Communications Building. Much of this work had to be done in dark stairwells, as power was cut during the evacuation due to water encroaching the building’s basement.

“We started moving things right away that morning,” says Pete Recker, DI circulation manager. “At first we moved a lot of things off the floor, but as the morning went along we learned that we could have up to 10 feet of water on our floor. So, we began moving anything we could up to the second and third floors.

“We were moving some larger items on the elevator, but by our second trip up you could hear the water coming in the basement—the elevator was promptly shut down,” Recker continues. “The power was cut in the building a short time later. Everything was hauled up dark stairways until about 2:30 p.m.”

Recker estimates about 40 computers, 75 chairs, 25 to 30 filing cabinets were removed from the DI quarters, along with tables, all business files, the web server, and even a year’s worth of back issues—25 from each day.

“We even took down some light fixtures from above our copy desk,” Recker says.

Yet the paper continued to roll out. In fact, the Daily Iowan printed Saturday and Sunday issues on June 14 and 15; the publication typically comes out Monday through Friday.

The circulation and business staff moved to space within the Gazette’s Iowa City offices, which are located in University Capitol Centre. The newsroom staff set up shop in Schaeffer Hall. During the week of June 16–20, Recker says nearly 6,000 papers were printed each day, and he expects to ramp up to 10,500 soon, possibly by Friday, June 27.

“We are all working out of donated spaces, our homes, and through our cell phones right now,” Recker says. “It’s been a challenge, but we are an efficient staff and our communication has been great and allowed us to succeed through it all. And our delivery staff has done a great job through all of this.”

Some DI staff members were allowed back into the Adler building on Thursday, June 19, to retrieve a few things. “It looks like we won’t have any damage—we got lucky,” Recker says. “We can’t wait to get back in.”

For Facilities Management, an invaluable army of volunteers

As the Iowa River swelled during the first week of June, Facilities Management staff worked around the clock to stay ahead of the flood waters.

But they were exhausted and overwhelmed by the task of protecting a growing number of University of Iowa buildings. On Friday, June 6, a call for volunteers went out by the Office of Student Life and UI Student Government. Within 30 minutes, hundreds of students showed up to help.

“The volunteers overwhelmed and invigorated us,” says Dave Jackson, assistant to the associate vice president for facilities management. “We absolutely couldn’t have done this without the volunteers.”

Throughout the next week, thousands of students, faculty, staff, and strangers filled and tied sandbags, formed sandbag lines, and built walls around buildings.

Guided by the University’s Flood Emergency Response Plan—finalized in April 2007 for a 100-year flood, not a 500-year flood as this was—Jackson helped coordinate the efforts, showing volunteers how high to build the walls and organizing groups in locations where the need was greatest. As new estimates showed the waters would rise higher than previously expected, volunteers returned to build the walls higher.

The atmosphere was festive at times. Old friends reunited; new friendships were formed. Jackson jotted down many of the names on a battered clipboard he carried with him. There was the principal from a local school and his family. There was the student government president and the faculty senate president. There were the Amish men and fraternity members. And there was the Iowa City contractor—whose own home had been destroyed by a tornado not long ago—who donated equipment and vehicles to help in the efforts.

When he wasn’t coordinating volunteer efforts or making sandbags, Jackson, an amateur photographer, took pictures of the work that he posted at www.hinkletown.com/iowaflood081.

At the sandbag camps, which were set up along Madison Street and in the Clapp Recital Hall parking lot, natural leaders emerged, Jackson says. People of all ages observed the process, got the hang of it, and showed others what to do. Departments like athletics and student life were particularly valuable in leading the volunteer efforts, Jackson says, because building teamwork is part of their everyday roles.

“Everyone was really coming together to save The University of Iowa,” Jackson says. “It bordered on passion and obsession. They were protecting sacred ground.”

On the arts campus, emergency efforts made a difference

Dan Heater points to the sandbag dike near Hancher Auditorium. Although water topped it June 13, flowing onto the University’s arts campus, the work that went into it wasn’t for naught.

“We kept the river and river current between our dikes,” says Heater, director of building services and landscape services for Facilities Management, noting that by stanching the rapid flow of water, staff and volunteers prevented additional damage to buildings.

Heater led a media tour to parts of the arts campus June 19. With clearance from safety evaluation crews, the group entered Hancher, Clapp Recital Hall, and Voxman Music Building.

In Hancher, water had risen from the basement to about 18 inches above the stage, swamping more than a dozen rows of seats. The cavernous, dank auditorium is a brooding contrast to the Hancher most of us know. (The lobby escaped flood damage.)

Sandbagging on the arts campus began June 7, producing a dike that stretched a quarter mile south from Hancher to the railway bridge over the Iowa River. But heavy rains the night of June 12 raised water levels beyond the point where crews could safely continue their work.

Cleanup efforts are under way at the Main Library, Adler Journalism Building, and other facilities. As the water continues to subside, massive external ventilation systems, pumps, and other equipment will be transported north to the hardest hit part of campus.

The extent of the damage remains to be seen, but Heater praises the heroic contributions of staff and volunteers who fought to contain the river.

“This work paid off for us,” he adds. “We believe it’s going to save the University millions of dollars, and that all the effort made a difference.”

At Adler and the library, preserving film from around the world

A crisis like the 2008 flood reveals things we might not notice otherwise—the sense of purpose that can unite a big institution, the muscles that start to ache after a day of sandbagging, and the diverse, often irreplaceable collections housed in pockets of the University.

Take the global cinema archive amassed by the Institute for Cinema and Culture. Many of its film prints, DVDs, and tapes are gifts from visitors to campus, or finds by faculty traveling the world.

Corey Creekmur and colleagues had emptied their department’s basement storage in the Adler Journalism Building. But as the flood threat grew more dire, they decided to evacuate the institute’s first-floor holdings, too.

“By then we had no power and no elevators, yet there was this amazing willingness to pitch in,” says Creekmur, director of the institute and associate professor of cinema and comparative literature, crediting Jenny Ritchie, Lacey Plathe, Sarah and Donald Moeller, Rick Altman, Claudia Pummer, Ellen Sweeney, and Teresa Mangum for their heavy lifting.

Creekmur later helped move Special Collections and University Archives materials from the Main Library basement next door, and found that the library’s Media Services department had likewise rescued its film collection—thousands of reels.

“I knew we had a lot of films,” he says, “but seeing them in stack after stack, literally taking up all the space in Media Services, was astonishing.”

For the bookstore, settling into another temporary home

Staff and students at the University Book Store in the Iowa Memorial Union were looking forward to a busy few months. They’ve got them, but not how—or where—they expected.

“We were really jazzed for the summer,” says Richard Shannon, bookstore manager, noting that he and colleagues had fully settled into their renovated IMU space and had just opened an Apple campus store.

But a rising river pushed their plans to higher ground—on June 23, they will open for business in the University Capitol Center (AKA “the Old Capitol Mall”) in downtown Iowa City.

Like other flood stories, the bookstore evacuation is a tale of quick thinking, determination, and volunteer spirit. Staff started clearing out on Wednesday, June 11, thinking they’d have until the following Monday.

But Monday became Saturday, then Friday afternoon, then Friday morning. Despite the advancing deadline, Shannon says they managed to move 90 percent of their inventory.

“It might have looked chaotic, but it was really pretty organized,” he says, describing efforts by students, IMU staff, and friends across campus who showed up to help. “Whenever someone came into the store, we gave them a box and pointed where to go.”

Hawkeye Moving and Storage delivered the store’s contents to its new location, where it’ll be spread over three retail spaces. The textbook department is the top priority, but other spots will handle Hawkeye apparel and gifts, and electronics and software. Shannon thinks he’ll be able to call back all his current student employees.

It’s not the first temporary setup for the store, which occupied the IMU main lounge during recent renovations. But another move so soon is tough, especially since it meant leaving a redesigned space that had just come to feel like home.

“It’s kind of a heartbreaker,” Shannon says, adding that it’s impossible to predict when the store might return to the IMU. “But the key thing for us is seeing the way everyone pitched in when we needed a hand.”

At the Main Library, saving UI history

As the Iowa River began its creep toward the UI Main Library, volunteers scrambled to rescue irreplaceable pieces of University history—bound copies of The Daily Iowan, the late James Van Allen’s papers, records from the Iowa Writers Workshop, even a collection of vintage Hawkeye game films.

“It brought to mind the 1966 flood in Florence, Italy, when it seemed like half the country turned out to save the city’s cultural treasures,” says David McCartney, University archivist. “It was very moving to see this remarkable community support.”

Library staff had been watching the waters since Monday, June 9, when arts facilities upriver—including libraries at the School of Music and School of Art and Art History—began to be evacuated. By midweek, flood predictions had grown graver than anyone anticipated, threatening University Archives and Special Collections material housed in the Main Library’s basement storage space.

At first, library staff cleared the lowest foot and a half of basement shelves. But on Friday morning, Nancy Kraft, head of preservation for the University Libraries, advised McCartney and colleagues—including Sid Huttner and Greg Prickman, head and assistant head, respectively, of Special Collections—to prepare for water levels of up to five feet.

“It was a very short meeting,” McCartney says. “I recall Nancy saying, ‘Let’s hope this will be a very elaborate drill.’”

Immediately, the Libraries put out a call for volunteers. They came by the dozen.

Chains of students, faculty, staff, and friends snaked through the stairwells, passing delicate documents hand-to-hand, piece-by-piece, to higher ground. Meanwhile, teams shuttled carts loaded with boxes and cartons up freight elevators. By early evening, they had cleared as much as 10,000 feet of shelf space.

For now, both the Main Library building and the resources within have escaped serious damage. Other facilities haven’t been so fortunate.

“With any disaster, there’s the trauma of the moment and the trauma that follows,” McCartney says. “As we start recovering, we have a collective responsibility to help our colleagues across campus however we can.”

Among the sandbaggers, a shared purpose

One shoveled, another held the bag. A third twisted and tied, then hefted it down the line. When one of them tired, a replacement stepped in with barely a word.

Countless volunteers turned out to fill sandbags and build levees along the Iowa River and around University of Iowa buildings threatened by the 2008 flood—an unprecedented campus effort that surprised even the sandbaggers themselves.

“I saw faculty I know, older folks, little kids who’d run to the top of the pile and push sand down to the shovels,” says Tricia Seifert, a postdoctoral research scholar at the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education. “We were all in it together.”

Sandbagging began the week of June 2, once it became clear that the University’s arts campus was in jeopardy. As the days progressed and the threat swelled, operations picked up speed and stretched downriver. By June 11, a hoard of volunteers had gathered outside the Iowa Memorial Union, building a wall that grew taller and deeper as the waters continued to rise.

On June 13, Seifert answered a call to help move at-risk materials in the Main Library, but joined the sandbagging crews outside instead. Like colleagues from the College of Education, she didn’t expect that floodwaters could stretch all the way to the Lindquist Center, home to the college and important information technology facilities.

Yet the next morning, she and the hundreds of volunteers who returned to Madison Street found themselves preparing for the unthinkable. The threat of thunderstorms late that afternoon put a halt to their work, but by then they’d barricaded Lindquist and other nearby buildings.

That night, word came down—the University had completed its levees and was preparing to wait out the flood. Volunteers had also managed to fill some 250,000 surplus sandbags for transport to other communities.

“I met a guy from Cedar Rapids, which had already flooded. He told me, ‘I just need to help,’” Seifert says. “I think that kind of spirit is what brought us all together.”