Interview with Cedar Rapids resident Kathy Alter

Kathy Alter, web content editor for The Gazette Newspaper in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, tells her personal story of being evacuated from her home and the resulting problems with going back in to her home (she says there are 12,000 people displaced), dealing with FEMA, her disabled mother (she got stuck in the bathroom in the hotel because it was not handicap accessible), and issues with needing dialysis available only on the other side of the river (Kathy is an end stage renal disease patient). “The stuff that was there was just stuff,” she says, “the important thing is that we both came out of it and we both came out of it relatively healthy.” (8:04)
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Interview of Cedar Rapids resident Ashley Sheda

Ashley Sheda, a resident of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, says that she has been let back into her home and has tried to start cleaning it up. However, all of her children’s things have been ruined, and they cannot actually been able to move back in the house. With her family, she said, they’ve been in a hotel room with three children, and all the things her neighbor had put in her garage to be safe from the flood had been lost. She had renter’s insurance but because the house was not in the “five hundred year plain,” they didn’t buy flood insurance. Upon learning that the house might go under water, she says they tried to call the insurance company to add flood insurance but was told it would take 30 days to activate it. (1:37)
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