Last FEMA flood home vacated in Linn County

Colleen Brown-Stanford didn't expect her family to be the last area flood victims in a FEMA trailer, but life intervened.

At the height of the disaster, 564 of the mobile homes provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency were in use in Iowa, spokesman Charlie Henderson said.

Brown-Stanford, 53, her daughter, Rachelle Brown, 22, and husband Steve Stanford, 52, were the last to move from a FEMA trailer in Linn County. Two others remain in Iowa, in Bremer and Black Hawk counties.

Most of the trailers are already gone from the state. Henderson said the majority go to other agencies, such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

On Tuesday, the Stanfords left their FEMA home at the Five Seasons Mobile Home Estates in northeast Cedar Rapids, after nearly two years.

“We've just had a lot happen to us,” Brown-Stanford said.

The three had moved to Iowa from Virginia in January 2008, just six months before the flood.

Brown-Stanford, a Cedar Rapids native, wanted to be closer to her grandchildren in Iowa.

Her husband, an electrician, found work in the area as they settled in to a home at 1124 I Ave. NW.

Then the flood came.

“We pretty much lost everything,” Brown-Stanford said, noting that water reached 6 feet into the first floor. “I was shocked that it got that high.”

The family, along with their two dogs and a cat, lived in a tent and then a motel until moving to the two-bedroom FEMA trailer in August 2008.

“It was a roof over our heads,” Brown-Stanford said. “It really helped us out.”

Stanford helped other flood victims with rebuilding, but his health began to deteriorate.

Unsure of what was wrong, he had to stop working and was finally diagnosed with lung cancer in April. He had smoked for almost 40 years.

Stanford-Brown said the family tried to find a rental home after the flood, but they were faced with high rents and found few places open to pets.

In February 2009, one of Stanford's sons - the couple has four adult children between them - died in Oregon. He was 25.

“Every few months, something came up and set us back a little bit, emotionally, financially and everything,” Brown-Stanford said.

As her husband underwent chemotherapy, she said FEMA allowed the family to stay in their trailer past the June 13 deadline they had set for them, based on their move-in date. The final deadline is Sunday, but most families were out well before that date.

They are staying in a hotel until the condominium they are buying in northwest Cedar Rapids is finished. That should be within two weeks.

The family worked with HACAP, which found a grant through an Iowa City-based church to fund their hotel stay.

Another area family is also staying in a hotel after moving from a trailer earlier this month.

Brown-Stanford said they are content to be in the hotel for now.

The trailer would have been too small in a short time. Her daughter, at 9 months pregnant, was due to deliver this week.