WATERLOO - Those in the path of approaching flood waters were scrambling to salvage those one-of-a-kind items insurance can't replace.

At the Waterloo Center for the Arts, on the banks of the rising Cedar River, Cammie Scully was sitting on a basement full of rare, unique and valuable works of art. Workers and volunteers worked frantically Tuesday to move the art center's large collection from the basement of the new Phelps Youth Pavilion a day before ground water filled to storage area.

"We got about two feet of raw sewage in the green room on the west side," said Scully, the center's director, whose own house in the Chautauqua Park neighborhood suffered extensive damage. "On the east side, in the Youth Pavilion, water filled the basement."

"I can't tell you how phenomenal all the volunteers were," Scully said. "It would have taken us five times longer without all the volunteers."

Despite the potential for major damage, the Center for the Arts and most other public recreation and cultural centers on the downtown's west side appeared to weather the record floods well.

It's too early to tell exactly how much damage occurred in the Center for the Arts basement, or the adjoining lower level of the Youth Pavilion, which just opened this spring. But workers did manage to save the pavilion's new boilers and chiller in a nick of time.

Just across First Street, workers were scraping and hosing down mud in front of Young Arena.

Recreation specialist Jake Schaefer said more than 1,000 sandbags prevented any serious damage.

"We held up fine," Schaefer said. "The damage was minimal and we're just picking up the pieces."

Flood water did find a way into the corner of the building, about 2 feet deep, and soaked the Black Hawks hockey team's locker room carpet.

Down the street, Waterloo Public Library employees were staring at damp basement carpet while heaving sighs of relief.

"We have a lot of rare materials down here," said Sheryl Groskurth, the library director. "But everything we couldn't replace or was too expensive to replace, we moved."

As it turns out, about 3 inches of groundwater invaded the basement but did not appear to damage much beyond the carpet, she said. The library was expecting to reopen today.

"We've had calls from people concerned about overdue books," said Groskurth, noting the facility has been closed all week and downtown was shut down for traffic. "We'll be waiving any late fees for a couple of weeks."

The floods caused the major Heartland conference to relocate from the Five Sullivan Brothers Convention Center this week, but the center appeared to avoid major damage. An employee of the center said water was being pumped from the sub-basement Friday afternoon.

Farther west, the Grout Museum buildings, including the Imaginarium, had no damage from the flooding. The Imaginarium opened Friday after being closed since Tuesday.

The exception was the Waterloo Community Playhouse, which suffered some damage to its items in the Center for the Arts but lost thousands of dollars worth of props and furniture stored in the basement of the Walker Building.

Contact Tim Jamison

at (319) 291-1577 or

tim.jamison@wcfcourier.com.