 Hello, I'm Javier Hernandez, reporting from Washington. Severe weather hammered the Midwest this year. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, heavy rain led to a citywide flood that forced the federal courthouse staff to evacuate their building. This is a catastrophic flood in progress. On Friday, June 13, floodwaters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa crested at 31 feet, 8 feet above the floodline of 1993, and well above the 500-year flood plan. We anticipated that perhaps the basement would be a loss. That basement has flooded probably three or four times in the last 15 years. We never dreamed that it would get above the basement. This video was taken when the river was at its peak, and this video was taken a few days later. This red line marks the floodline of 93. The following Wednesday, court staff returned to the courthouse to salvage what they could. We've got the U.S. Marshals office pulling their stuff out. Probation. Probation got hit pretty hard here on the first floor, and then the clerks office, we're pulling our stuff off the second, third floor. First floor offices here that we can salvage. Most people are maintaining a sense of humor. You laugh to keep from crying, and we're doing pretty good. In fact, the district court is doing pretty good. In spite of the circumstances, before the water reached the building, court officials activated their continuity of operations plan, or COOP. This plan outlines a course of action to get the courts up and running after an emergency. One of the first steps was to transfer data for finance, administration, HR, and jury administration, as well as day-to-day activities to the Sioux City courthouse. Data for electronic documents, notes, email, and the court's website were moved to the national platform supported by the administrative office of the U.S. courts in Washington, D.C. The district and bankruptcy court notified the AO and said, hey, the court's closing down because of the imminent flooding that's going to occur or expected to occur. And so they fell over their case management, their CMCF replication. So both the district and bankruptcy court fell that over and that takes a matter of just minutes now. We do about 20 to 30 of these a month for various reasons, power outages, upgrades, and so forth like that. This is Renee, and I have a question about Cedar Rapids. AO officials also activated the Judiciary Emergency Response Team to provide administrative and procurement guidance to the courts. I leave this meeting, I'll be signing the TSP order. The next challenge was finding office space for the entire court. The GSA found this building on the south side of town. We are packed in here like sardines. Fortunately, we all like each other. But not everyone fit, which led to some creative, temporary solutions. Until we can get the temporary space, we thought we'd try to work out of my home here for a couple days. It's working okay, but not great. We went it that way. Having our paper files and everything that we need to do our work obviously is ideal and that's what we have in our normal space. The court has gone to a lot of electronic filing, so if you have really good internet access, you could do a lot of what you need without having those paper files, but right now we have neither. Another challenge is where to hold prisoners during court proceedings. The temporary plan is for the U.S. Marshals to bring in secure buses. Right now we're making temporary facilities here and that'll work. But if it's going to be longer in a year, then we need to make something more permanent. Oh, my hair is full of water. And although they were the hardest hit, probation officers never missed a beat thanks to their high-tech mobile phones or smartphone devices. Very important. Not only important to get the data, but also to be able to make contact with offenders like I was mentioning earlier and staff because all of our staff listings all of the important phone numbers we have are in those phones. Remarkably, on Tuesday, June 24th, court proceedings resumed in Cedar Rapids about eight business days after the disaster. I think that a lot of people in our community are suffering. I think to see the United States courthouse and the staff go back to work and provide service to the public is critical. I think that the fact that we're up and running will cause optimism in the community. There's no word yet on when or if the Cedar Rapids staff will return to their building. For the US federal courts, I'm Javier Hernandez in Washington.