Claudia Boyce holds a photo album of pictures from the flood of 1993 as she stands in the former homestead in Cedar City, Mo. She grew up in the small town of Cedar City, just across the Missouri River from Jefferson City. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent more than $2 billion to buy out land in flood-prone areas over a nearly two-decade period. The buyout program launched after widespread flooding in 1993 now has gobbled up almost 37,000 properties, tearing down the homes that were there and prohibiting people from rebuilding. In some cases, entire neighbors and small towns have disappeared as a result of the buyouts. (AP)By DAVID A. LIEB and JIM SALTER, Associated Press
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Standing in the front yard of her former childhood home, Claudia Boyce looks across the street to the site of the wooden-framed Methodist church where people had gathered along the banks of the Missouri River since 1878. There’s no trace of it now. Gone, too, is her family’s yellow, two-story home, the Baptist church to her right, the row of neighbors’ homes to her left, even most of the trees.
In their place is mere grass and dirt. The community of Cedar City has vanished – a victim of the great flood of 1993 and a government buyout program that scattered its 400 close-knit residents to higher ground in other towns.
“It’s heartbreaking – it just really is,” said Boyce, whose memories of the town now are preserved only in a photo album and old newspaper clippings.
Since floodwaters ravaged Cedar City and other river towns in 1993, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has spent more than $2 billion to buy 36,707 properties nationwide, according to figures provided to The Associated under an open-records request. Millions more has flowed to those buyouts through the federal Community Development Block Grant program. The money brought an end to more than 3,000 towns and neighborhoods.