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Cameras Go Inside CR City Hall

By Justin Foss, Reporter

By Justin Foss

Story Created: Jul 17, 2008 at 7:17 PM CDT

Story Updated: Jul 17, 2008 at 11:14 PM CDT

CEDAR RAPIDS - We've heard city hall got hit hard, now we can see it.

Cleanup crews say it's the worst they've seen. First, because it's in the middle of the river.

"And the fact that it continued to take water from the river longer than any other building in the city," said John Levy with Globe Midwest Risk Management.

Levy is overseeing the clean up work and is consulting with the city on how to handle the mess in it's 310 damaged facilities.

All the water rushing into Veterans Memorial Coliseum left a mess. In the basement, not only did the water completely fill the room but the sludge was waist deep.

"Where we're standing right this minute, was a block wall that separated the mechanical room from the rest of the hallway, the flood waters knocked the wall right over," said Levy.

Workers have been down here for three weeks, working 12 hours a day to clean everything up.

They've hauled out 50,000 bags of debris, that's enough to fill up 300 dump trucks.

There's still plenty of sludge in the garage between city hall and the courthouse. They hope to get this ready for a final cleaning by the end of Thursday.

Cleaning for the rest of the building will take until sometime next week.

"Costs are still being assessed, this is just the first inning of a nine inning ball game," said Levy.

Email Justin Foss at Justin.Foss@kcrg.com

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