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Emphasis - December 3

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wium/local-wium-938289.mp3

Macomb, IL – Rich Egger's guests are David Casagrande and Heather McIlvaine-Newsad of Western Illinois University. They talk about the ongoing recovery efforts from the Mississippi River floods of 2008.

Casagrande and McIlvaine-Newsad authored the report Slow Road to Recovery: Small Rural Community Resilience in Illinois after the Mississippi River Floods of 2008.

The researchers talked to people in communities up and down the river in Illinois. They found it's difficult for some people to accept buy-outs and move on after floods because their family history in their community dates back generations. But in many cases, people do leave, and Casagrande and McIlvaine-Newsad found small towns get even smaller after every major flood.

Casagrande and McIlvaine-Newsad say the research was funded by the National Science Foundation's Cultural Anthropology Program. Their goals were:

1) To document the response and recovery process in detail from the perspective of those impacted.
2) To contextualize the 2008 recovery within broader social processes.
3) To identify those factors that might contribute to community resiliency.
4) To make recommendations.