Some flood victims returned, many just left

Two years after the 2008 flood, Tom Slaymaker is home, in a sense.

Slaymaker's family was the first in the area to move into a Federal Emergency Management Agency mobile home in July 2008. Their home at 422 Eighth Ave. SW and a nearby home they were renting while selling that house were inundated with Cedar River floodwaters in June 2008.

The family returned to neither, but purchased and moved into Slaymaker's grandmother's home, at 1307 Third St. SW, in late December.

“We were dry and we were together, and that was what was important,” Slaymaker, 37, says of the various sites the family lived after the flood.

The epic disaster displaced thousands of residents, scrambling several Cedar Rapids neighborhoods. No single enclave claims home to the displaced, but numbers from various agencies paint a picture of the post-flood city.

Rory Sullivan with the U.S. Postal Service in Cedar Rapids says about 5,500 flood-affected homes and businesses used the post office's temporary cluster mailboxes after the flood. About half are receiving mail delivery again.

Bruce Jacobs, the city's utilities engineering manager, says residential water accounts dropped to 40,731 in January 2009, its lowest point post-flood. The accounts climbed to 41,962 last month but still haven't returned to the 42,015 of June 1, 2008.

The water division also hasn't returned to its pre-flood annual growth rate of 600 net accounts. Such growth would have added 1,200 to 1,500 accounts to the system since June 2008, but net growth since the flood has been about 10 percent of that.

Superintendent Mark Jones says the city's Solid Waste & Recycling Division has about 38,000 customers, down from 40,000 pre-flood. An estimated 2,000 of the 4,000 flooded homes are getting service again.

Jones says route losses are most noticeable in the Time Check and Czech Village neighborhoods.

“We still are getting the occasional person getting back into their home and getting service,” he says.

Flooded neighborhoods don't reflect it, but U.S. Census estimates show the Cedar Rapids metro population increased by 1,413 people in the Linn/Benton/Jones county area from July 1, 2008, to July 1, 2009, a 0.6 percent growth.

At the height of the disaster, 592 Iowa families stayed in FEMA trailers in Marion, Cedar Rapids and elsewhere. That number dwindled to four this week, with three in Linn County and one in Black Hawk County, spokesman Russ Edmonston says.

The last day to be in FEMA housing is June 27.

Director Steve Schmitz says the Community Recovery Center in Cedar Rapids is still assisting about 100 people with rebuilding, finding housing and other flood issues. Schmitz says the city's low-income residents had the most difficult time rebounding after the flood.

The center will close its doors Sept. 30.

Ask Kenneth Benesh, 68, which of his neighbors has returned to the Czech Village area and his quick answer is “none.” More than 8 feet of floodwater tore through his home on C Street SW.

One neighbor found an apartment. Another bought a house across town. One man died shortly after the flood, and his wife moved with her son to southern Iowa.

“Most of them just disappeared,” Benesh says.

He counted a handful, like himself, who rebuilt their homes in a 10-block area abutting the Czech Village business district on 16th Avenue SW.

Homes between 17th and 22nd avenues and A to C streets SW appear frozen in time. Gray water marks etch the abandoned homes, windows are broken or boarded, garages remain toppled and spray-painted signs warn “keep out” and “unsafe.” A groundhog waddles into one abandoned home, the only sign of life for blocks.

The neighborhood, along with Time Check in northwest Cedar Rapids, will never be the same.

Yet, little by little, some are returning.

The Slaymakers moved from camping out for about a month after the flood, to the FEMA mobile home, to a hotel after mold was found there, to a different mobile home and finally to the house in the Taylor School neighborhood.

Tom Slaymaker and wife Kara's daughter, Samantha, 18, recovered from a near-fatal bout with meningitis during that time. Their son, Andrew, 11, was overjoyed to return to Taylor School for his final year there, and the family is relieved to be in a permanent place.

For every Slaymaker family back in their neighborhood, there's a Leonard Pfeifer, whose life remains in limbo.

Pfeifer, who is in his 60s, has bounced from home to home of his three adult children in Cedar Rapids since the flood.

A second mortgage that wasn't covered by flood insurance and having to pay back $1,900, the only FEMA money he received because the home was insured, has complicated recovery.

The St. Matthew's School custodian is contemplating rebuilding his home on First Street NW, next to the Cedar River.

“I have no choice,” he says. “I could live within the income I receive, or I'll be bankrupt (buying a new home.)”

He questions why city leaders boast about receiving $18 million from FEMA for their $2 million investment in the Sinclair meatpacking plant, “yet we're being chastised for trying to be made whole.”

“Now we're all losing,” Pfeifer says. “None of us are going to have anything except super, super indebtedness.”