The first thing Jeff Foster noticed was the darkness.

As Foster, a 2008 graduate, pulled off the interstate and headed into his hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he saw the dark, dirty remains of the second largest city in Iowa. Parts of the city had no power. Mud covered the streets.

“Everything has just been gutted,” Foster said, comparing the scene to a Hollywood disaster movie.

The flood waters that have drowned parts of Iowa and left cities along the Mississippi River devastated have touched the KU community as well, leaving a sizable population of KU students and Iowa natives worried about their home state.

Some, like Foster, returned home to assess damages, while others, such as Christine Weirich, Iowa City, Iowa, junior, spent the past two weeks sandbagging and trying to help neighbors save their houses. And some, such as Hannah Jeffrey, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, senior, have stayed in Lawrence, relying on calls to friends and television news reports to gather information.

Two blocks down from the Cedar Rapids Christian Center, the church Foster’s father, Barry, has been the pastor at for 10 years, a Dairy Queen sat completely submerged by flood waters.

That was the scene Foster saw as he returned home last weekend to find his father’s church decimated. The floodwaters swallowed up the Christian Center, leaving it buried under 18 feet of standing water, as the Cedar River crested and flooded everything within 10 blocks on each side of the river.

“It’s pretty much destroyed everything,” said Foster, who attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids and was a senior on Kansas’ football team last fall.

Foster, whose younger brother, Jason, also attends the University, said he was in Lawrence two days before the first flood waters hit. His father called and told him that Cedar Rapids was expecting 20 feet of water, eight more than the 12 feet of water it takes to flood the church basement.

The Fosters hurried to surround the church with sandbags and stack everything in the basement up on stilts.

“We ended up getting 35 feet of water,” Foster said.

This isn’t the first time floods have affected Cedar Rapids. Foster said his basement flooded during the massive floods of 1993.

But this time, the damage was much worse.

“It’s a little bit of disbelief, a little bit of shock,” Foster said. “We just have to remember that the only loss was stuff, and stuff can be replaced.”

Foster said his father was going to meet with engineers this week to determine if the Christian Center could be saved.

But the Foster said his family feared they might have to demolish it and start over.

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In Christine Weirich’s hometown of Iowa City, Iowa, the water is finally starting to recede.

It’s been two weeks since the flood waters spilled over the banks of the Iowa river and submerged parts of Iowa City, including the campus of the University of Iowa.

Weirich’s hands still have blisters on them from hours of shoveling sand into bags. The floods spared her house, thanks to its location on a hill at the top of a subdivision, but Weirich said she wished the same could be said about her neighbors. Her neighborhood was flooded, leaving a lake in her backyard and only one bridge leading out of her subdivision.

“We have a lot of friends who’ve been affected and we’re trying to help them out,” Weirich said.

She hasn’t seen many of the images shown on the nightly news. She’s been too busy sandbagging and helping with recovery efforts. Weirich said she’d met people from all over — people who came from faraway towns to help with the sandbagging efforts.

Weirich said the television images couldn’t accurately capture the devastation.

“You don’t get that wide image of the flooding,” Weirich said.

*****

Hannah Jeffrey, Cedar Rapids senior, went to Thomas Jefferson High School just like Jeff Foster did. Her old house sat 19 blocks west of the Cedar River, just four or five blocks west of the predicted flood zone.

Jeffrey, who is living in Lawrence and taking summer classes, said she’d been in constant contact with friends in Cedar Rapids.

She said one family was just hoping that the flood waters wouldn’t reach their attic.

“I’m honestly at a loss for words,” Jeffrey said.

The parks Jeffrey played at as a child, the library she visited, the theaters she went to, they’re all under water.

“This is one of those moments in life when the reality of what is happening hits you so quickly and with such force that you think you’ll never take safety for granted again,” Jeffrey said.

As of Tuesday, the Midwest flooding was still razing cities along the Mississippi River and many parts of Iowa and Missouri were still under water.

Jeffrey was in Lawrence, but she couldn’t help but think of Iowa and Cedar Rapids.

“Watching the destruction of a beloved city is difficult,” Jeffrey said.

— Edited by Asher Fusco