WATERLOO - Even vague ballpark estimates of flood damage to the downtown business district were unavailable Tuesday as businesses began to pump out and clean up their shops following last week's flood.

Few, however, were untouched.

"I can tell you just about 90 percent of the buildings have water in their basements," Main Street Waterloo executive director Terry Poe Buschkamp said. "Luckily, very few have water on the first floor."

A handful, including Doughey Joey's Peetza Joynt, Newton's Jewelry Store and Eternal Ink Tattoos, had no water at all, Buschkamp said.

At the Dan Gable International Wrestling Institute and Museum, on Jefferson Street, the rebuilding work was well under way.

And, there was a lot of work still to be done, said Kyle Klingman, the museum's associate director.

"We had drywall pulled out that was 3 feet high," he said.

He pointed outside at a growing pile of furniture, fixtures and display cases that stretched almost the entire length of the building.

"All that stuff is gone," he said.

"There's no timetable," Klingman said of reopening the museum, which houses wrestling trophies, artifacts and memorabilia from all over the world.

Mike Chapman, the museum's executive director, declined to say for the record how much it would cost to fix the museum. He did say that it had no flood insurance.

The museum's annual celebrity golf tournament - its biggest fundraising event of the year - is going on as scheduled June 27, as will its pro wrestling event at Young Arena that night, Chapman said. The museum's induction ceremony and banquet also will still be held as planned June 28.

Three-foot sections of plasterboard were torn out from the building's interior walls.

The museum looked much like a construction site.

Water first found its way into the building's basement June 10, and quickly crept up the basement steps, reaching the main floor and climbing the walls.

A restroom on the main floor had a layer of mud that reached the wash basin and covered the toilet fixture.

"We had no options but to get out," Klingman said. "We took a few things, but that was minimal."

A week later, a pool of standing water still reached halfway up the door leading to the basement.

"Everything down in the basement was destroyed," Klingman said.

Rich Penn, who owns three flood-ravaged properties on Fourth Street, including the old Waterloo Candy Co. building, and the former Grand Hotel, laid the blame for the disaster at the door of City Hall. He has has long-standing differences with city officials regarding his downtown properties.

"All of this water came from Sixth Street," Penn said. "It backed up the sewer system because the city never got those gates closed at the Sixth Street storm sewer."

A few proactive moves could have averted the problems, Penn said.

"We've been complaining to the city for 10 years about this road here because they elevated it two feet," he said, referring to changes made to accommodate construction of the elevated U.S. Highway 218 that runs along the western edge of downtown.

Penn said the Waterloo Candy Co. structure had 6 1/2 feet of water in its basement, where he was storing architectural fixtures he had planned to use restore the old edifice.

Penn, who also owns the recently facelifted former Ritz Lounge storefronts on West Fourth Street, indicated he's been complaining about drainage problems for a decade. "In fact, I walked Mayor Hurley around that block two weeks ago. We've been fighting them about that since they built it because of that runoff." We were going to use all that stuff in the basement to restore the building, but it's been on hold because the city wouldn't do anything about the drainage out there."

Penn said he had attempted to take some proactive measures himself, but was stopped.

"We tore up the sidewalk in front of it and tried to run a tile back to the storm sewer, like, five years ago, and they stopped us," he said. "We have hounded and hounded and hounded them. This flood is the result of that. I was one voice down here saying, 'You did something wrong; fix it.'

Nearby, at the Waterloo Center for the Arts, the Youth Pavilion and the Community Playhouse, clean-up crew members Ken Warren and Brandon Cannon said most of their job revolved around dealing with drains, saving cardboard boxes and other items stored in the center's basement areas.

Most of the water had been funned out of the building by Tuesday morning, although pumps continued their work.

"We have a boiler room that ran waist-deep in water," Cannon said.

In spite of the progress in clean-up efforts, the center's buildings were still closed, Warrens said.

"We haven't had them inspected yet," he said. That has to happen before the gas can be turned back on."

Contact Jim Offner at (319) 291-1598 or jim.offner@wcfcourier.com.