A few brave souls return to ‘wet side’ of Time Check/Ellis

Even as an excavator attacks the shell of a house two doors down, Greg Vail vows he's staying.

“They give the people no choice,” says Vail, raising his voice to be heard over the engines. “We've lost our neighbors; now we're losing our neighborhood.”

Vail, 43, came back to 1426 First St. NW about a year after the river came over the levee, filling his two-story house to the first-floor ceiling.

“I waited, like a lot of people, to see what was going to happen next,” says Vail, a construction worker. “When I couldn't get any answers, I decided I didn't have much choice but to rebuild.”

Vail and maybe a few dozen others have returned to homes in the Time Check-Ellis neighborhood, even though they'll end up on the “wet side” of any future flood wall or levee. Sharing a love of their old neighborhood and a do-it-yourself ethic, they gamble they've seen their lifetimes' once-in-a-lifetime flood.

“Who knows? We might (see another), but we're not too young,” says Nancy Waybill, 74. “Hopefully, we won't see that. We're going to enjoy it as long as we can. Even if they build a levee, it's going to take a few years.”

“I'm not worried about it,” Vail says.

“I figure in our life span, with any luck, we'll never see it again,” says Stephanie Gilbertson, 58, about five blocks upstream of Vail at 1925 Ellis Blvd. NW. “We're not terribly nervous.”

“Fool me once, and so forth,” says Neal Gilbertson, 64.

Greg Eyerly, the Cedar Rapids' flood recovery director, says the city will continue to provide utilities to residents who return to homes on the wet side, but the costs and risks are all theirs. A formal policy is still being developed, but Eyerly expects to follow the lead of Grand Forks, N.D.

“They provide utilities and services to those homes until there's a flood event,” he says.

When that happens, the city would cap sewer and water lines to prevent flood damage.

“They'd be on their own during a flood event,” Eyerly says. “The city's not stopping them from building there, but there's no public money going into those locations.”

Restrictions on public assistance, whether from the state's Jumpstart program or from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, are “a good-faith policy,” Eyerly says. FEMA money can't be spent in the 100-year flood plain without additional mitigation steps. Properties in the 500-year plain may receive public aid.

Waybill and her husband, Lowell, never really considered moving away from 1805 Ellis Blvd. NW, the home they built 13 years ago. They used flood insurance to pay off their mortgage, allowing them to get a Small Business Administration-backed loan.

“We owe too much money on the house to leave,” says Lowell Waybill, 76, a Rockwell Collins retiree. “We love it here, that's for sure.”

Down the street at 1701 Ellis Blvd. NW, Dawn Langham is glad she came back, even if many didn't.

“All the neighbors are really nice people,” says Langham, 66. “Of course, all of the old ones are gone. I'm here, and clear down at the other end of the block, there's another.”

Langham, living on Social Security after forced to quit working as a carpenter because of a lymphatic disorder, was one of the first to return after the flood, living on the second floor as she rebuilt the gutted first floor.

“I was the crazy old lady living upstairs with a light bulb,” she says. “I had a little help with Sheetrock, but the volunteers would go away and never come back. This is my handiwork.”

Upriver in Palo, Mayor John Harris and his wife, Phyllis, returned to their home, although the city's population is down about 200 from roughly 1,100 pre-flood.

The water nearly filled the walk-in lower level, but “we said, ‘This is home,' ” says Harris, 57, who used much of his retirement account to pay for repairs. He'll have to forego an early retirement from Rockwell, but he has no regrets.

“Everybody was affected differently,” says Harris. “I'm really pleased to see that the folks that decided to stay in Palo and call it their home have done that.”

New construction in Palo must be elevated two feet above the river's 2008 level.

“If this catastrophe would ever happen again, the damage will be significantly less than what we saw in 2008,” Harris says.