CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa – Jessica Tennyson, 34, stays in her apartment on the southeast side of town for as long as she can at night.
Eventually, however, the heat is too much for them to bear, and they have to go out into the pitch-black street.
“I’m always afraid I’m going to sit on my sidewalk one of these times and just hit someone, scared, scared,” Tennyson told The Daily Beast, putting her fingers up in a way that mimicked a gun. “And I can not see where I am going or where I can walk.”
The Tennyson neighborhood has had no power since a powerful derecho, a line of fast-moving windstorms, brought hurricane-force winds into the center of the country on August 10th. Six days after the storm came out, some Iowa residents said it took far too long for the feds to survive in a region where massive damage to corn crops could be destroyed in the long run.
Others were just trying to get used to their new normal.
The local police department patrols Tennyson’s neighborhood regularly, and walks through her house every ten minutes or so between noon and daylight, because there’s a place in town.
“They try to maintain the burglary, but at the same time, when you see their lights on the car, it’s a very open open situation, where they feel they have to patrol every 10 minutes,” she said. ‘It puts me aside. And I know they are there to protect their best interests, but it can be unnerving. ”
Residents of Cedar Rapids had only about an hour to prepare for the storm after Monday morning when power went out in Des Moines. A derecho is rare enough in Iowa that many residents said they had never heard the word until the storm.
Jerry W. Frajman, a 66-year-old who lives about a mile from downtown Cedar Rapids, watched the second episode of the old TV show The Beverly Hillbillies when the wind began to blow at speeds of 100 km / h.
“Everything started to flicker,” Frajmin recalled. “And then the power went away and she’s been turned off ever since.”
More than 135,000 people were without power in Linn County after the storm hit Monday, and according to poweroutage.us, as of Sunday night, at least 46,000 residents were still waiting for their power to be repaid.
Gary Watson, 40, who was lying on the ground in his apartment building when the storm passed, was sitting outside his apartment on Sunday afternoon. He said his building was technically considered unsafe because the siding was burnt down and stinking stormwater dripped throughout the week.
He said he had nowhere else to go.
All of his vulnerable food is spoiled and he does not have much food, even though he is offered a lot of food by local volunteers, Watson said. He did not go hungry because of all the stress.
“It’s probably not good because I’m a Type 2 diabetic,” Watson added.
He hopes his power will be up again in the next three days, as Alliant Energy tells residents that most of the city’s power should return by Tuesday.
Until then, Watson had planned to spend most of his days outside on his red folded lawn chair.
Some residents were skeptical that the power would soon return. Streamlines still hung in the middle of some streets of the city, and massive trees still stormed on top of others.
Joe Hendryx, 38, said his parents were without power all week. He brings them food and cold water and things to keep them busy, as they are unable to leave their homes due to fears of COVID-19 infection.
On Thursday, State Senator Liz Matthis, of Cedar Rapids, announced during a news conference that 100 National Guard members would help clean up the city. And on Sunday night, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds formally requested a swift statement for presidential major disaster. According to a news release from the governor’s office, the state asked for nearly $ 4 billion to repair the storms, which some estimates suggested a third of the state’s corn crop was in danger.
“I do not know why we are waiting to determine that we need help,” Hendryx said. “People need to see more proof that we need help. It has been frustratingly slow. ”
By Sunday, FEMA had already approved Iowa’s request to participate in the Lost Wages program, which will give Iowans who receive unemployment benefits an additional $ 300 each week after a $ 600 pandemic benefit taken by Congress expires. But it was difficult for some residents to shake the feeling that they were being left out to dry.
“I think it’s amplified because of this whole COVID thing, because we already felt painted and calm and listless,” Hendryx said. “I just feel like there needs to be so many things I can do – and that needs to be done.”
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