Nashville is calling; what it hears about Cedar Rapids flood recovery worthy of a country song

CEDAR RAPIDS - Flood-pounded Nashville is calling.

Both Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, and Jim Ernst, the head of the Four Oaks family services agency and the agency's Affordable Housing Network, report receiving calls related to Nashville's flood this week from people asking about Cedar Rapids' flood-recovery experience.

Eyerly's call came from a newspaper reporter.

“If I had to summarize,” Eyerly said in an e-mail on Friday, “I'd call it a ‘deer-in-the-headlights' interview. I gave them a lot of sobering advice.”

Eyerly told the reporter that Nashville was still not close to flood recovery, that it was still in flood response mode.

“'You know, you're right, we haven't even identified all the damage yet,'” Eyerly said the reporter responded. “I replied, ‘Either have we (in Cedar Rapids).' She said, ‘WHHHHAAATTT?'”

Ernst's call came from a child welfare organization.

“What I've learned from this (the Cedar Rapids flood and flood recovery) is it is just not a sprint,” Ernst said he explained to the organization. “You've got to figure out a way to prepare people emotionally for how long recovery takes. As much as you don't want it to take that long.”