TV stations face major obstacles to cover the floods

Flooding caused major damage to downtown Cedar Rapids.

By Andrew Nostvick, Wartburg College

Northeast Iowa TV stations had to overcome a number of difficulties in covering the June flooding.

KWWL lost their Cedar Rapids newsroom at the Alliant Tower downtown. Assignment Director Jason Mortvedt said the water reached to the ceiling of the newsroom.

“When we had our trucks down there and in place and stuff like that, we could go live from our live trucks,” Mortvedt said.

Channel 7 problems
The KWWL station in Waterloo also experienced flood damage. Mortvedt said the station saw flooding in the basement and also experienced a loss of power.

"We had Chris Carter and Sunny Layne with our meteorologists sitting outside in the parking lot on stools because obviously our studio was completely dark," Mortvedt said.

Other problems
The Gazette building, where the KCRG television station is located, wasn't close enough to getting flooded, but just barely.

“The flood waters came within less than half a block of the station, but we were spared the major mess that much of the rest of downtown Cedar Rapids is digging out from under,” KCRG News Director Becky Lutgen Gardner said.

The station was without power for several days and stayed on the air using its own emergency generators.

The other Cedar Rapids station, CBS 2/Fox 28 was not damaged in the flooding..

“Just watching the river move down stream, it's just indescribable,” KCRG Chief Meteorologist Joe Winters said.

“Being a Cedar Rapidian for 18 years, it's just very sad to walk around and see the destruction.”