This flooding is truly terrible, with ramifications to ripple out far from Iowa.
Re Flood waters contaminated with hog feces (let alone carcasses) has been of great proportions in recent history. Here is from 1999 Hurricane
Floyd
Floyd's floods were heavily polluted from gas and oil, sewage, pesticides, millions of animal carcasses and waste from hog farm manure
lagoons.
Many North Carolinians will never forget...the disastrous lagoon overflow at Ocean View Farms in Onslow County in 1995, which dumped more that 20
million gallons of hog waste into the New River, causing massive fish kills and contaminating drinking water.
Sadly, this is nothing new.
Media attention? Makes one think that, until pigs (hogs) fly, we'll see just more of the same.
I can remember as a kid watching the news, whenever there were natural disasters, one of the first signs of assistance was to see the National Guard
out with their soldiers and equipment helping. Iowa's Guard was out there, but as with other Guard units, also in Iraq. This was
before the
flooding:
Given the number of weather-related disasters Iowa has faced in recent years, namely flooding and tornadoes, concerns have mounted as to whether
the Guard will be prepared to adequately and efficiently handle these situations when they arise.
"We need vehicles for support and communication equipment to help speed up our response time," Zirkelbach said. "We've had up to 50 percent of the
Guard deployed over the last five years and we've managed to respond to every significant weather-related event. It has not been an issue during this
time and we don't perceive this will be a problem in the immediate future."
Except a 500 year flood?
[edit on 16-6-2008 by desert]
