Cedar Rapids struggling 9 months after flood - USA Today Article
3/24/2009 8:26:43 AM
March 22, 2009
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/floods/2009-03-22-iowafloods_N.htm
The record floodwaters that engulfed this city last June receded long ago. Parts of the city buzz with activity again. Workers are rebuilding the railroad bridge that collapsed into the Cedar River.
For thousands of people, though, the disaster continues. "It amazes me that people think the flood is over," says Amy Wilkinson, whose home was flooded. "It's still very much here."
Eight months after flooding devastated swaths of the Midwest, the city that suffered the most harm — 5,390 houses and 700 businesses were damaged or destroyed — is struggling.
Entire neighborhoods are empty. About 1,300 homes in this city of 126,396 will be razed because they're in flood plains or unsafe. There are "for sale" signs on others whose interiors are gutted.
There are still overnight curfews in some areas. City Hall is still located in an office park. Some residents are still living in FEMA trailers.
"Nobody is satisfied" with the pace of recovery, Mayor Kay Halloran says. "We've done a whole lot, ...but people are out of their homes. They're not happy, and if they're not happy, I'm not happy."
As flood season returns, there's also anxiety. Tom Slaughter — whose bar, Tornado's Grub & Pub, flooded — eyes the river warily. "I'm really worried," he says. "You never thought about it before. Now you always think about it."
Tornado's reopened in November, but Slaughter is still fixing the kitchen and exterior, and some nearby businesses left, cutting his customer base. Still, he feels lucky. "I think we might have made it through this."
Wilkinson isn't so sure. She and her husband, Phillip, worked extra jobs and put every cent they earned into remodeling their 100-year-old house. After nine years, they paid off the second mortgage and their credit cards so they could sell it and buy a place in the country to raise their three kids.
They didn't know the house was in a 500-year flood plain, which means there is a 0.2% chance of flooding in any given year. Water was waist-high on the first floor, and the foundation crumbled.
The Wilkinsons stayed with a friend, then rented. With donations from Phillip's co-workers at Alter Trading Corp., they bought the country house.
They recently learned the city won't buy the flooded house. They can't afford its mortgage and fear they'll be forced into foreclosure and bankruptcy. Last week, they got a $10,000 offer. When Amy sees other ruined homes, she knows "there's a mortgage chasing all those people."
Some treasures survived. A 24-foot stained-glass window in the Veterans Memorial building by Grant Wood, who painted American Gothic, can be repaired. Halloran says a downtown levee won't displace a 1911 bank by architect Louis Sullivan.
The National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library now displays some artifacts in a mall. It bought a new building where it plans a flood exhibit while it rebuilds, President Gail Naughton says.
Halloran says full recovery will take a decade or more. City government needs $3 billion, City Manager Jim Prosser says. This month, residents approved a 1-cent sales tax that will bring in about $18 million a year. The city expects some help from the federal stimulus package.
The recession and a $779 million state budget shortfall might complicate the comeback. Gov. Chet Culver has proposed a $750 million borrowing plan that includes $150 million in statewide disaster aid, but state Sen. Rob Hogg, a Cedar Rapids Democrat, warns, "We can't do everything."
Until permanent flood walls and levees are built — a project that will take at least a decade and cost millions of dollars — water- and sand-filled barriers will be placed in vulnerable areas when the river rises. Public works director David Elgin says the interim plan will restrain water up to about 24 feet. Last year's crest: 31.12 feet.
Officials plan a renewed city with neighborhoods where people live, shop and work, an end to what Prosser calls "economic segregation" and energy-efficient, shared government buildings.
Life will improve, but some people won't shake what happened last summer, Prosser says. "When you hear it raining in the evening, you get anxious," he says. "This type of trauma, it sticks with you."
