Red tape continues to hamper flood recovery, frustrate residents

Shirley Anderson Reynolds returned to her flood-damaged home with her son, Wayne Anderson, to gather some plants from the yard. The family purchased the home in 1961 and raised five children at the northwest Cedar Rapids location. They hope to get a city buyout and anticipate the property will be converted to flood-buffering green space.

CEDAR RAPIDS — One year after massive floods washed over Iowa’s second-largest city and surrounding areas, many Linn County residents believe too many government roadblocks remain on the road to full recovery.

“I feel like every step I’ve taken has been a battle,” said Debby Snyder, a resident of the city’s southwest side who still doesn’t know the future of her family’s home. “We’ve tried to do things in the ways we were told to do them, but it just feels like we are being forced to jump through hoops. And if we jumped through one hoop, they’d come back and say: ‘Oh, but you forgot this.’ It was like every time we jumped through one flaming hoop, they’d just come up with a new rule.”

Her voice, shrill with frustration, suddenly turns softer as she describes the day exactly one year ago when she and her family evacuated to the home of a nearby relative. Expecting that the Cedar River might fill her first floor with 2 to 3 feet of water, she had placed many items on counter tops or on other pieces of furniture. Like so many Cedar Rapids residents, the Snyder family never expected the massive flooding that ultimately filled their home with 9 feet of water.

At the exact same time the Snyder family was digesting the reality of their flood damage, Shirley Anderson Reynolds was on the northwest side of town lamenting the loss of a home her family had occupied for more than three decades.

Several residents of neighborhoods slated for buyouts and ultimate demolition returned in the days before the one year anniversary. This particular former northwest side resident left a note behind.

“The flood was just inches from the second floor,” Reynolds said. “In 1993 there was water in the basement and the sump pump took care of it. I simply had no idea that it was going to be this bad.”

Reynolds’ eyes played across the front porch as she described purchasing the property and raising five children there. Her gaze then landed on her adult son, Wayne Anderson, and she smiled.

“Actually, I’m one of the fortunate ones,” Reynolds said. “I had a son who took me in for 10 months.”

The Snyders, who slept several nights in a vehicle when their relatives’ home wasn’t large enough to accommodate everyone, were not as fortunate. And that, perhaps, is the best explanation of why the Anderson family seems merely puzzled by some government activities while the Snyders are frustrated and angry.

“We couldn’t get a [Federal Emergency Management Agency] trailer because we weren’t willing to force our children, who had already lost everything, to give up their pet,” Snyder said. “We were living in the four rooms on the second floor of our house, and then Mayor Kay Halloran comes on the news. She’s sitting in her massive living room and says [of the flood victims], ‘Do they think we can just wave a magic wand?’ It was the most insensitive and arrogant thing I’d ever heard.

“If Halloran’s house would have been in the flood, I bet she would have made sure something got done. I’d like to see her living in a tent, or living without a furnace for eight months. She’s in no hurry to take care of any of the needs of the flood victims, but she’s comfortable so that’s fine.”

Snyder’s list of complaints includes difficulty locating inspectors for the property, obtaining permits and receiving “straight answers” from all the different agencies at all levels of government involved in making decisions that directly impact flood victims. The latest of the frustrations involves the government’s desire not to duplicate services. To that end, flood victims who have been waiting months to be part of a city buyout have learned that if they had flood insurance or took state Jumpstart funds, their buyouts may only be for their land and not their homes.

Disaster recovery volunteers from other parts of the U.S. remain frequent visitors to Linn County. Brian Schnitzer, spokesman for Indiana-based Church of the Good Shepard high school youth group pictured above, admitted that he "didn't expect the community to still look like the disaster had happened just last week." The 17-member group was in the process of demolishing this house, and had already completed five other residential projects in the city.

“I laughed out loud when I saw [U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary] Shaun Donovan on the television and he said that he was working to make sure that the next disaster victims wouldn’t have these same problems,” she said. “What would be so bad about fixing it right now for the people going through it right now?”

Flood victim Jerry Baker not only agrees with Snyder, but believes Iowans have reason to be especially upset with how the government has handled this disaster.

“The first thing any of them say when they come to town is how pleased they are with how we helped one another,” he said. “Well, isn’t that what they’ve all told us to do? At every campaign stop we were told to take better care of our communities, to reach out to one another, to do things for one another. The implication was that if we take care of one another, the government will be there to prop us all up when we need it.”

But as confused and frustrated as these flood victims are with how government has been managing recovery efforts, they aren’t yet convinced that simply changing elected officials on the 2010 and 2012 ballots will be enough.

“I don’t really give a damn,” Baker said. “Big deal if we take one asshole and replace it with another. My guess is that we’re still going to get shit.”

Snyder believes Cedar Rapids’ municipal governement has been especially guilty of adding layers of bureaucracy, adding to the overall disaster.

“They’ve just screwed everything up so badly,” she said. “They have caused and created so much red tape that they’ve just made our lives miserable. They simply compound every injury. I can’t get the knife out of my back because it is stuck so damn deep.

“They want to offer you 25 percent down to move to a new house? What’s the point? That’s only good if you buy another house in the city of Cedar Rapids. You’ll still have the same morons running the show.”

While tensions between flood victims and the city government might still be too high for an immediate healing locally, Baker thinks that there might still be hope for action by state and federal officials.

“They do need to redeem themselves,” he said. “Stop sending out press releases about the millions of dollars earmarked for Iowa and realize that the $125 million given to the state last fall still hasn’t made it into the hands of the people who need it.

“We have pulled ourselves up as much as we can without help. The rest of the country knows this and is watching to see what happens here. It isn’t just Iowa. The whole nation is watching to see if caring and goodness begets caring and goodness. God help us if it doesn’t.”