Iowa officials fight flood from armory

JOHNSTON, Iowa, June 15 (UPI) -- Iowa has been coordinating its response to the devastating floods from a National Guard armory about 10 miles northwest of the state capital.

Lt. Gov. Patty Judge and David Miller, who heads the state's emergency management and homeland security agency, are among the state officials working out of an underground room in Johnston, The Quad City Times reported.

The disaster has been a tough one for Iowa with nine rivers flooding, some of them at 500-year levels.

"Everybody's event is the most important, of course, to them naturally," Judge said. "And so it's our job here to try to do a little triage and to get the resources where they need to be today. And that's not always easy when you've got as many events going on as we do."

Gov. Chet Culver has been spending most of his time traveling the state in a week that has also seen the death of four Boy Scouts when a tornado hit a Scout camp in Little Sioux.

Judge, Miller and other top officials work with screens showing weather forecasts and television newscasts of the flooding, with banks of telephones and computers. They make sure that sandbags, boats and other supplies get where they are needed, the newspaper said.