Not until October...

I stood along the curb in the Time Clock area of Cedar Rapids, watching as the second of Becky's trash piles was loaded into the garbage truck, and listened to one of the garbage collector guys talk about the flood debris clean-up. All day city dumptrucks had been passing by, filled with the remains of appliances, carpet, furniture and other items homeowners had discarded from flood-damaged homes. I knew it would take awhile to get everything cleaned up but I didn't expect to hear that the garbage collectors had been told to expect it to take until October before all of the flood debris is collected. Holy crap!

I missed most of the drama of debris-lined streets when driving into the city. It wasn't until Becky and I took a quick trip to her boyfriend's home (she needed her camera to document damage for her FEMA claim) that I really got an eyeful. As we navigated our way from 11th street 6th street, my eyes almost couldn't take it all in. The water was gone, but you could see the remains of the water lines on homes, varying from mid-1st level to as high as the 2nd level. Whole households were piled up along the curbs, plastic lawn chairs lying next to antiques next to mountains of clothing, books, lamps, etc. It was a sobering sight and a reality check for just how fortunate Becky had been to only get a flooded basement.

Houses passed by in flashes of color from the color-coded placards officials had attached to each front door, indicating how safe the house was for re-entry. Green, yellow, red and purple; homeowners dreaded the red and purple and sighed in relief at seeing green or yellow. Becky's house was coded yellow -- some structural damage but owners could re-enter at their own risk -- with an additional handwritten comment that home inspectors had declared the water heater a goner. There was no mention of her furnace so she'll have to get an electrician to look it over, make repairs or replace it, before she can have the electricity turned back on. Before we were done hauling the dripping wet, moldy, sewage-slimed items from her basement, her washer and dryer had joined the discard pile. They, too, were casualites of the flood.

It took about 10-hours for removal of the damaged items, sheet rock, and framing from the basement. We left the upper sheet rock on the walls despite knowing it would also be coming down. Our first mission was to remove the wet stuff, the rest could be done another day. At first it was only Becky doing the work. I joined her an hour after she started and then another friend had joined us by lunchtime. Who knew what three women could accomplish in six hours? By the time the men showed up, we had removed 90% of the crap. By 4:00 p.m., muscles and back sore from improper lifting and sunburned from breaks taken on the deck (away from the moldy basement), I told Becky that she had "a lot of shit". She defended herself by claiming most of it was her ex-husband's possessions, left behind when he deserted her. I responded that it didn't matter....everything that came out of the basement became, in my mind, "shit" at that point of the day. Although she had been making progress in getting his stuff to his mother's home, there was still a lot of things left behind that we then had to cart out of there. 200+ soggy, moldy books are not light as feathers! We saved what we could and tossed the rest.

The day, of course, was not without comic relief. Becky's ex used to call himself a "redneck" and would indulge that claim by purchasing items that he believed made him a redneck. It wasn't until a talking, singing, moving deer head joined their household that I had to give him some credit for the claim. That deer head even had a remote control. One of the first things I said to Becky before joining her in flood clean-up duty was that I hoped the deer had been submerged. The gods were kind and we got a perverse sense of enjoyment out of carting that thing out of the basement. It got really funny when Becky took a sledgehammer to it...and could barely hurt it. That deer was so rubberized that the sledgehammer would bounce back off it. She didn't give up easily and it wasn't until she got one satisfying wack on the back of the mounting piece that she breathlessly tossed the head on the trash pile and headed back to work. The rest of us were nearly collapsed on the ground from laughing. It wasn't long after that the garbage truck showed up for the 2nd pile of debris we had created (the first pile had already been taken away) and Becky rushed out to watch the deer head be crushed by the machine. I think the garbage guys were just as entertained by us as we were by watching the deer disappear into the jaws of death. Becky carted around one of the plastic antlers for awhile as a trophy.

It was a lot of work. I could barely walk the day after due to sore muscles, but I'm glad we got it done so quickly. Even with only a few days post-flood, mold had started to grow on items in the basement. If we had waited longer, the mold would have reached dangerous levels. We got it done though and Becky's family came the next day to finish up the removal of last pieces of sheet rock and start the process of FEMA claims, etc. Today Becky and her dad are scrubbing the basement walls. The longest part of the process will be waiting for an electrician to give them the "all clear" to have service restored. With the number of homes damaged by the floods, that might take awhile. In the meantime, Becky & son are safe and secure at her boyfriend's home (also damaged by the flood).

A different perspective: Later Becky told me of the reaction of her boyfriend's brother as they navigated their way back along 6th street at the end of the day. It's one thing to see the devastation of the flood from a civilian perspective. It was awful, and I knew it would be a long journey to a full recovery. It's quite another thing to hear a soldier compare the damage to the devastation in Iraq. Apparently as he followed them back to the boyfriend's house, the devasation he witnessed gave him a flashback of Iraq during his last tour of duty and he arrived at his brother's home pretty shaken. It would never have occurred to me that there could be a comparison between the two. I've always envisioned the devastation in Iraq to be much much worse than what we are dealing with. It definitely gives you something to think about...