Rising water forces evacuation of hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; 100 city blocks underwater

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP) - Rising river water forced the evacuation of a Cedar Rapids hospital Friday after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 100 city blocks were under water as America's Midwest struggled through a spate of bad weather that killed at least seven
people this week.
The hospital's 176 patients, including about 30 patients in a nursing home facility at the hospital, were being evacuated to other hospitals in the region. The evacuation started late Thursday night and continued Friday morning in the Iowa city of 124,000 residents.
«Some are frail and so it's a very delicate process with them,» said Karen Vander Sanden, a hospital spokeswoman.
Dave Koch, a spokesman for the Cedar Rapids fire department, said the river will crest Friday at about 31.8 feet (9.7 meters). It was at 30.9 feet (9.4 meters) early in the morning. In a 1993 flood, considered the worst flood in recent history, it was at 19.27 feet (5.9 meters).
No deaths or serious injuries were reported in Iowa on Friday, but one man was killed in southern Minnesota after his car plunged from a washed-out road into floodwaters. Late Wednesday, a tornado tore through a Boy Scout camp in the remote hills of western Iowa, killing four teenagers, while other tornadoes killed two people in Kansas.
In Wisconsin, amphibious vehicles that carry tourists on the Wisconsin River were used to evacuate homes and businesses in Baraboo, north of Madison. Hundreds more in the region were urged to evacuate.
People in several northern Missouri communities, meanwhile, were piling up sandbags to prepare for flooding in the Missouri River, expected to crest over the weekend, and a more significant rise in the Mississippi River expected Wednesday.

Amtrak's California Zephyr railway line was suspended across Iowa because of flooding along the BNSF Railway.
Gov. Chet Culver declared 83 of the state's 99 counties as state disaster areas. Nine rivers are at or above historic flood levels.
In Des Moines, about 300 volunteers and members of the Iowa Army National Guard worked late Thursday into Friday to shore up a levee showing some soft spots north of downtown. The levee protects a neighborhood along the rising Des Moines River.
There are about 200 homes in the neighborhood, which is under a voluntary evacuation.