Essential Estrogen

On Thursday, June 12, I took this photo on 3rd Ave SE, looking toward the Cedar River:

When I walked through the downtown area on Sunday, June 15, I tried to stand in the same spot on 3rd Avenue and re-create the earlier photo:

Keep in mind that by the time I was able to access downtown, crews had already been into the area to begin clean-up. Also, this location is a little further from the river. As such, it did not suffer the truly brutal currents that were present on 1st Street and 2nd Street.

This picture looks surreal to me -- just minor debris and muck on the sidewalks and streets as evidence of what had been there only days earlier. But don't let it fool you, because major damage lurks in each of the buildings shown.