OPL Begins Recovery

July 17, 2008

When the river level started rising in mid June, the OPL facilities at the Iowa City Municipal Airport needed to be protected. The OPL Flight Operations Hangar lies within the 100-year flood plain, and with many parts of the Iowa River surpassing 100-year flood levels, something needed to be done.

Estimates predicted that there would be around 6 inches of water in the hangar at some point during the flood. This raised a great concern because of the valuable equipment that is housed in the hangar. The hangar provides more than workspace for OPL; it also holds most of the simulators and vehicles used in the lab's research projects.

An effort was organized to move all of the servers and equipment to higher ground. Some of the equipment was taken to a different location, but some items were unable to be moved off the premises, and they could only be raised above the ground.

Some of the more valuable items removed were the servers that house programs for running simulators and store data from research. The housing for these servers is shown below before and after the removal process. Also the SOES tactor suit mannequin depicts the anticipated water levels inside of the hangar.

Server rack before servers were removed.	Server rack after servers were removed.

With the work done on the inside of the hangar, there were plenty of preparations left outside. Sandbagging efforts took place thanks to a bus full of volunteers sent by the city. The efforts made by the volunteers helped protect jet fuel stored under the hangar that could not be moved.

The volunteer efforts were greatly appreciated, and each was asked to sign the door that leads into the hangar. Their efforts would have helped save OPL a great deal of time and money if flood waters had risen to their anticipated levels.

Since the water has receded, OPL has begun the process of reestablishing normal operations. Luckily the laboratory recieved enough volunteers to prepare for the waters that could have caused a great deal of damage; for this the laboratory would like to extend thanks to these individuals.

	Flood 2008 OPL and University of Iowa Flood efforts.