Flood Prevention and Lessons Learned (Cedar Rapids Iowa Flood of 2008) Essay

Flood Prevention and Lessons Learned (Cedar Rapids Iowa Flood of 2008) - Essay Example The floods which were experienced in 2008 in the city of Iowa caused massive damage, farmlands were destroyed businesses were demolished all major social amenities were almost taken to ground and thousands of people who were living in Iowa were left homeless. Millions of dollars’ worth of property was destroyed and lead to the lives being lost and livelihoods being shattered. Floods were later to be categorized as the Fifth major disaster that has ever occurred in the United States and the first in the city of Iowa (Nazoom, 58). When it comes to comparison and categorizing, it takes one back to the flood stories. While giving a comparison between the two floods stories namely the Old Testament and Gilgamesh epic, one gets a great an impression that there are similar occurrences. For some scholars, the similar elements between the two flood stories become perplexing. There are possible things with the two accounts shown by Alexander Heidel. These possibilities are that the Hebr ew story came first then the Babylonian story followed thus copied from the previous. The Hebrew story could therefore have borrowed the ideas from the Babylonians and both stories descended from the common original story of Noah. Since many people are conversant with the original story in the Old Testament, they forget to research on how the genesis story resembles the flood story of Gilgamesh (Sanders, 2003). The two stories are so alike with the main theme of forgiveness being the domineering similarity between the two. The two stories however differ in the events that took place during the floods, which for many seem to be the small details. In the two flood stories, the numbers of event days differ regardless of the basic events taking place in very different ages. Focusing on the flood stories for a minute, It is before 2000 B.C that Gilgamesh flood story got the first publishing while the Old Testament story was in 400 B.C, which came much later than the Gilgamesh flood (Sand ers, 2003). In both stories, God or gods gets annoyed and the Old Testament clearly shows how those who did not follow the correct ways he wanted them to follow annoyed God. The other difference is that there are worshiped gods or God as well as heroes like Noah during this period. When the Gilgamesh story takes place, gods allow existence of half-god and half-human on earth. The other similarity is the number of people saved and the reasons behind the saving after the floods. Having looked at both stories carefully, there is a good man like Noah in the Old Testament and Utnapishtim from Gilgamesh, saved and chosen by either God or gods (Nazoomi, 2005). In the two stories, both men choose to send birds to find the dry land. Both Noah and Utnapishtim are rewarded because they show proper reverence to their gods. Years after the floods in Cedar Rapids took place, the people and the leadership of that area is still trying to recover from the damage that the floods caused their sufferin g. Different policies have been developed since of which some have been accepted and others criticized or rejected. The United States Government offered the City of Cedar Rapids 2 million Dollars to help them after the devastations, but what was actually incurred by the floods was 5Million dollars worth of damages. What it actually meant was that the remaining amount in which the Government did not provide, the people of