Starting over: Condemnation leaves mobile home owner struggling after the flood

About two dozen flood-damaged mobile homes and several A-frame houses in East Cape Girardeau have been condemned, forcing their former occupants to find new places to live.

"It's a total loss," said Brandi Walters who owned one of the mobile homes and had lived there with her 15-year-old daughter for four years. They, along with other residents of the mobile home park on the east side of town were forced to evacuate in May as Mississippi River seep water flooded that part of the village.

At their monthly meeting earlier this week, East Cape Girardeau board members voted to condemn the mobile homes and the adjacent A-frame structures as well as the Sugar Shack restaurant (formerly known as the Tiki Hut) and the East Cape Campground.

"We lost everything, our clothes, our furniture," said Walters, a cook at Fountainbleau Lodge in Cape Girardeau. She had no property insurance to cover the loss.

When they evacuated, Walters and others in the mobile home park could only take a few belonging with them. "We had a half a day notice and they wouldn't let us get nothing except a couple of bags of personal belongings," she said.

Now, three months later, nothing in Walters' mobile home is salvageable. "Everything has black mold all over it," she said.

Walters and her daughter have been staying with a friend in Cape Girardeau for about three months. "My friend has been really good to us," Walters said. "She's opened her home to us and welcomed us right in, but it's not our home."

Residents learned of the plan to condemn the flood-damaged property shortly before the board meeting. Walters believes the village board and mayor Joe Aden should have done more to protect the mobile home park as the floodwaters encroached on the town.

"We asked for help when the water started coming up in our backyards," she said. "When the water was touching our trailers we asked for help and they denied us. But as soon as it got to the town hall building they had people everywhere helping and sandbagging, but they didn't care anything about the trailer court because they wanted it gone."

Aden said he has empathy for the residents who lost their homes.

"We basically did all we could, but it was a major flood," Aden said. "I hate that anyone lost their homes, but it could have been a lot worse. We could have lost all of East Cape if it hadn't been for the (U.S. Army National Guard) troops, all the volunteers and other people who chipped in."

Aden said it will be up to the property owner to decide how to remove the condemned mobile homes. The mobile home park and the Sugar Shack are owned by Jerry Westlund, who also owns The Pony in East Cape Girardeau. Attempts to reach Westlund on Wednesday afternoon were unsuccessful.

Representatives of East Cape Girardeau submitted an estimate of the town's street and road damages to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on Wednesday. "It was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars," Aden said. "We don't know at this point when FEMA will be here to assess things."

Meanwhile, Walters said she's looking for a new home, possibly in Cape Girardeau. Her daughter, who was a student at Shawnee High School, is enrolled this fall at Cape Girardeau Central High School.

"I haven't been able to find anything yet," Walters said. "I'm looking for rental property, but when you have to come up with a deposit and the first month's rent, it's a struggle because I've lost everything. I'm starting all the way over from the bottom."

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