The Cedar Rapids Gazette: Palo, Iowa July 11, 2008
Thursday, July 11, 2008
Indiana volunteers help restore Palo
The Gazette
jeff.raasch@gazettecommunications.com
PALO — Kelsey Harnish is a pageant queen. Sorority girl. Cheerleader. Her favorite color is pink.
On Thursday, she was prying up floorboards inside a home on Main Street.
Harnish, 19, worked with 17 other members of Life Community Church in Bluffton, Ind. She’s been here since Monday and hasn’t worn a hint of makeup.
“It’s been rough,” Harnish said. “I’ve been dirty, mucky, sweaty and hot.”
The group is wrapping up a weeklong stay today, after gutting 11 homes in Cedar Rapids and Palo. They made the 450-mile trip in a retired Greyhound bus.
“It’s a tremendous amount of work,” said Kent Ringger, one of the church’s 700 members.
“Some of the mucking — we were down in Mississippi three times, and this is some of the most difficult we’ve seen.”
Of the 423 homes in Palo, all but 10 were affected by the surging Cedar River and its tributaries. Trisca Smetzer, assistant city administrator clerk, said power and gas have been restored to half the town.
Smetzer said more than a dozen demolition applications have gone out, and four have been submitted. Smetzer said the Palo Mini Mart has been issued the only permit so far, because of the resources it provides residents.
She said several of the others who requested demolition applications indicated they also hope to rebuild. Reconstruction permits are also being issued.
“We’re continually working and we have since day one that they let people back in,” Smetzer said.
Buyouts remain a possibility, Smetzer said, but a decision won’t be made soon.
“It could take 12 to 18 months to find out exactly who will be in that area,” she said.
Restoration is under way, with help from the church volunteers, who carried soupy, black water out of one home on Main Street on Thursday. Later, they were planning to gut two more homes on Lincoln Drive.
The church, founded in 1997, has sponsored trips to other areas hit by natural disasters, including Georgia and South Carolina.
“That’s part of why we exist,” Ringger said.
An announcement about the mission trip was made during a service, and just a few days later, volunteers were rolling toward Cedar Rapids.
“I heard about it in church and said to my mom, ‘I’m going,’” Harnish said.
It’s her first trip to Iowa. She’s spent part of it trying to convince her mother that she is, indeed, getting dirty.
“I never thought I’d rip up a floor,” Harnish said. “Not like this.”
Contact the writer: (319) 360-7035 or jeff.raasch@gazcomm.com