During the last week of August, Jeff Binder, Debbie Kent, Betsy Kalmar and Arden Swanson-members and staff of Pilgrim Congregational Church in Oak Park-drove four hours to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to help with flood relief.
Just a little history. The Cedar River in all recorded history has never gone more than 21 feet above flood stage. On June 13, it crested at 31 feet, or so they think, as it was way above all gauges. The entire downtown, with all the major businesses, and all the county and city government offices were flooded. Also flooded were about 6,000 residences, most of them in lower middle class neighborhoods. Many of the residences were retirees on fixed incomes. Approximately 10 percent of the homes had flood insurance. The remainder are on their own.
The houses we worked on were probably pretty typical. Most of the houses had full basements and first floors that were about 5 feet above ground level. The waters were high enough that they filled the basements and up to about 3 feet on the first floor. Because of the issue of mold, everything down to the skeleton of the house had to be removed. Because of lack of help, for many people, this process had barely started. Block after block looked like a ghost town as houses sat apparently normal on the outside, but on closer examination, were uninhabited, standing idle, waiting for someone to begin working on them. Police patrolled regularly and there was an 8:00 p.m. curfew, as the only ones around were work crews, and they were few and far between.
Judy, the owner of the first house we worked on, came by for a minute to meet us. She was living in a small studio apartment while her house was being worked on. She was so appreciative that we were there to help. Her house was almost stripped down to bare studs. Now she just had to pull her money together so she could put in all new water pipes, electric wires, furnace and ductwork, all appliances, drywall, and then furniture. She actually seemed optimistic, even though with a lot of help and more money than she had, it would be months before she could pray to move in.
The sponsoring organization, Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, fell over backwards to make us feel welcome and appreciated. A local church had let them set up a headquarters there and had constructed 50 bunk beds to house the volunteers. When we were there, it was just two of us. Apparently there had been a lot of volunteers right after the flood, but now media attention had dropped to nothing, as did the volunteer groups.
Charlie, the coordinator, estimated that if the volunteer hours increased dramatically, they might get a lot of the homes ready to move into in three years. The longer we were there and saw the extent of the devastation, the more that seemed way too optimistic.
Before we went, we were pretty surprised that we had not been contacted sooner. But when we saw the amount of work and how overwhelmed everyone felt, we were actually surprised that we were contacted as soon as we were. As we left, we felt like we were leaving a different planet. It was hard to believe these deserted streets of row after row of empty houses were only four hours from all the resources of Chicago.
This year, the Thank Offering in November is going to go to help buy drywall, nails, wire and other supplies for these homes. But what would be a hundred times more helpful would be if we could mobilize regular teams to help out our brothers and sisters who are in such need.