Opening Slate:
On Tuesday September 22, 2009, FEMA Adminstrator Craig Fugate toured the Historic Time Check community in Cedar Rapids, IA.

Administrator Fugate:
Well, thank you Mayor. In my line of work the saying is, "All disasters are local"... And as you look around and walk through the community and you see what happened a year ago and you see the work still to be done, we're here as part of the President's team...And again on behalf of the President, Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, FEMA is not the team we are part of the team and that team continues to work as the local officials, the mayor and her team, the county supervisors. But most importantly, for us is working with the Governor of the state of Iowa as we go through the challenges that were brought about by this flood.

Gov Culver:
Can we say hello to these folks? 

Wieneke:
Absolutely, 

Gov Culver:
Why don't we?

Wieneke
This is ah...this is the Davis Family


Family member:
I met this guy before

Gov Culver:
How About the Challenge of trying to find a new home?

Someone in the crowd:
Affordable, affordable home

Gov Culver:
This is 65 and a comparable...I mean the challenges of getting into some of them, similar.

Wieneke:
Yeah, the area you're looking at as I mentioned this gives you a good idea if this is just one area, we had of course, like most cities we had an affordable housing problem. Before, well probably 80 percent of affordable housing we have in this city was... was in the flood...most of the river...so damages you're seeing here are going to be similar on the Southwest side, over in Czech Village, they'll be somewhere on the Southeast side and then you add in the downtown... that lost...and while it may have been underwater a short time, it took us ah a week to ten days to get a lot of people even back to their homes.

Administrator Fugate
...the hard work us now is to rebuild and rebuild in such a way as the mayor pointed out that we just don't replace things, we do it right, to do it better so that future floods will have less impact and our communities will continue to grow and be strong. But again Governor, I'm glad to be part if your team and to continue to support your team. But it always comes back to FEMA is not the team folks. We're just part of the team. We're here to support the Governor as he supports local officials. That's how the system works and this state illustrates why it works the way it does.