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and the church-based InterfaiIh Disas- ter Response Network both helped buyout candidates with extra money for moving OUI of the !loodplain. The SalvaIion Army spent $82,000 and the Interfaith Disaster Response Group spent 583.700 to help people with initial down paymems. closing costs. repairs 10 their new homes. and the myriad financial obligaIions that make any move stressful. t8 The goal of the Interfaith DisasIer Response Group was 10 help people for whom the buyouI would have been impossible without a little exIra linancial help. The group helped about 20 families with grants of between $5.000 and $7,000.19 Be- cause of these many layers of support ranging from appropriations of federal money to personal one-on-one contact wiIh !lood victims. the Cape Girardeau program was accomplished with more posiIive feelings than perhaps any- where else in the state. Not everyone accepted Ihe buyout offer. buI most did, and did so gladly because they were assured it was being made with the purest of motives. The firsI homeowners to receive a buyOUI check were Henry and Oma Copeland on March 21. 1996. The city made offers on 15 other homes during Ihe same week. By May 2, 1996. Ihe city had made 28 offers and only one offer had been declined.2o On SepIember 6. wiIh its money running out. Governor Carna- han announced IhaI Cape Girardeau was getting an additional $738.585 to expand Iheir bUYOUI program. This money had been previously allocaIed as buyout money for a number of other Iowns, but iI had been returned. In some places the buyout procedure was not as successful. and for one reason or another. potential sellers backed OUI. This "de-obligated.. money can be allocaIed to another buyOUI projecI. Cape.s success record made it a good candidare for these exIra funds.21 The additional money made it possible 10 include Meadowbrook, an area thaI had applied for buyout money in OCIober, buI was cut from the program. Now wiIh the high risk homes in Red Star and SmelIerville rapidly being bought up. the extra money made iI possible to make offers on property in lower risk areas. By the end of October, 65 homeowners had received offers. Some of them like, Jimmie Fisher and his neighbor Mike Maglone. had been !looded out year atier year. Fisher acknowledged thaI it would be hard to leave the home he had lived in for 57 years. bUI he was looking forward to a year when he didn't have 10 find a place to stay... when the water gets high. 22 By the time the program ended on January I, 1997, Cape Girardeau had made offers on 114 properties. Twenty homeowners whose homes are !lood risks refused Ihe offer to move from the tloodplain. Still. the siIuation has changed radically in Cape Girardeau. On August 8, 1998. the Cape Girardeau city governmem invited the personnel from SEMA. FEMA, the Missouri Department of Economic Development. Ihe Salvation Army. and The InIerfaiIh DisasIer Response Network, all who had helped make the buyout program a success, back to Cape Girardeau for a fish fry with the buyOUI recipients. The letter of inviIation 10 these organiza- tions from Mayor A.M. Spradling, 111 said this was "an opportunity for the Flood Buyout recipienIs to personally Ihank you ... who have made the Program Ihe success iI has been,'. Ironically, iI rained. bUI, given everyone's mutual experience with the tlood of '95 Ihe mood was convivial. Martha Lemonds. a buyout participant who sold her house on the !loodplain and now lived high and dry, said "We can enjoy the rain now. We live on a hill. We can sit in our family room and enjoy every minute,'.23 Page 23