Word: cedar
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...month after floodwaters destroyed their home and belongings in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the Slaymaker family - Tom, 35, Kara, 37, Samantha, 16, and Andrew, 10 - are living in a neighboring community in a mobile home provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The trailer is better than the Slaymakers' previous shelter - a tent in a friend's backyard where the family camped for three weeks after the Cedar River swamped 1,300 city blocks in early June, prompting 25,000 residents to evacuate. Better, but still not home. "I'm worn out," says Tom Slaymaker. "I have no idea...
...consider the state's worst natural disaster. Seventy-eight of Iowa's 99 counties are under presidential disaster proclamation. Almost 31,000 people have registered for FEMA aid; more than 9,000 homes have been damaged and 3,000 destroyed; flood repair estimates have surged (to $1.3 billion in Cedar Rapids alone). The government, however, has learned from Katrina. The FEMA "mobile homes," as the government prefers to call them, are arriving (of the 500 requested in the Cedar Rapids area, 305 are on site and 95 are now occupied) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) has approved $95 million...
...property's 66 rooms should help them do just that. At Onsen Papawaqa - Papawaqa is apparently the aboriginal name for a local sacred mountain - the walls are in unfinished concrete. But the most remarkable design features are the uneven floors, bathtubs, furniture and occasionally ceilings made from rare incense cedar (the environmentally conscious will be gratified to know that the wood was not felled but harvested from trees blown over in a typhoon). Rooms also come in a plethora of different layouts and designs, but full-length glass windows are common to all, giving calming views of a riverbed, bamboo...
...rethinking that judgment. In a spring of calamitous weather, the state's can-do stoicism was tested by two tornadoes; one tore through a Boy Scout camp and killed four teenagers. Rains then swelled the rivers and strained the levees, which burst indiscriminately. Iowa's second largest city, Cedar Rapids (pop. 124,000), and one of its smallest towns, Chelsea (pop. 276), were inundated. On Friday the 13th, downtown Des Moines was under voluntary evacuation. The surge was both overwhelming and fickle. Neighbors on high ground saw friends next door lose cars to a furious downpour. The massive tide...
...Cedar Rapids, some residents and business owners have reacted with anger and frustration when denied access to their flooded neighborhoods, which officials say remain unsafe. Flood waters that have already ravaged many cities are moving downriver toward the already swollen Mississippi, threatening still more communities. For eastern Iowans like Dave Metzler, who was evacuated late Thursday night from the bowling alley he owns and lives above in Coralville, near Iowa City, life is now an anxious waiting game to learn the full extent of the damage. "I not only lost my business, I lost my home - I got the double...