CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – The American Red Cross currently has around 250 volunteers in northwestern Iowa cleaning up flood damage.

Peter Teahan, Red Cross spokesperson and volunteer, said flooding in northwestern Iowa has hit the region harder than it ever has in recent years, and it caught people by surprise.

”What it looked like when we got here was towns inundated with water. For those in Cedar Rapids who lived in the 2008 floods, it was similar to that, of course smaller towns,” Teahan said.

Governor Kim Reynolds has issued a disaster proclamation for 27 counties in northwest Iowa, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Individual Assistance Program is already activated in five northwest Iowa counties.

Roads are flooded and towns are so isolated that groups like the Red Cross are having a hard time even getting in to help people, and the lack of available housing is leaving people without options.

”Until they can find the resources and the workers to build a new house they may need to relocate,” Teahan said.

Red Cross volunteers are managing five shelters and providing meals to people using emergency dispatch vehicles.

They’ve also started distributing emergency supplies to people who haven’t fully lost their homes to help with the extensive cleanup process.

”It’s not the water we think of when we go swimming or when we take our boat out on the water. This is all the chemicals and all the discharge from all over now in the water and inundating their houses,” Teahan said.

Even though help has been around for weeks, Teahan said it will take much longer before everyone can get back home.

”This is a long term process and a long term recovery. This is just the beginning.”

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