CLENDENIN, W.Va. — J.D. Gandee had five rental properties flooded on June 23rd and lost several commercial properties as well. None of them had ever been threatened by high water. Since June 23rd it’s been a struggle for him with a lot of people depending on him to come through.
“That family I was able to put in another house, much smaller but they’re making do. This famiy is staying with family,” said Gandee as he pointed out the homes on his property along Spencer Road in Clendenin. “This family here is desperate. They’re paying $100 a night for a hotel room and they only have two nights worth of money left. They’re pleading with me to get them something fixed up and livable.”
Gandee said his tenants have been unable to find other housing and were depending on him. He’s trying, but it’s an upstream swim.
“I’ve been working four weeks in a row without a day off,” he said. “We’ve gotten some 800 volunteer hours so far and we’re not even close to being done.”
A volunteer group from Morgantown tackled a mobile home Friday which had not been touched since June 23rd. The group found neat stacks of once clean clothes placed in dresser drawers saturated with muddy water. A shoe box of letters and pictures showed happier times where it sat on a collapsed dresser covered in muddy water. The ceiling bowed under the weight of soaked insulation. The smell of rancid meet in a displaced freezer in the middle of the kitchen floor cannot be described.
The group loaded up a 50″ flat screen TV with cracks in the pattern of a spider web across the screen. The washing machine sat filled with clothes and remaining flood water to the very top, indicating the waters of Sandy Creek rose suddenly and apparently hit while the family was going through the normal turns of life on laundry day.
The volunteer group wrestled a water filled refrigerator out the front door, still adorned with children’s artwork and a few family pictures to be loaded up and hauled.
“I appreciate the volunteers who’ve come out,” said Gandee. “It’s massive, MASSIVE. There’s no way I’d be able to do it by myself. There’s no way.”
Pam Rouse sat at a table under a pop-up tent at Bills Used Cars in Clendenin with a cell phone and a notebook.
“I have ten pages of people who need volunteer help,” she said. “The first week we averaged about 200 people a day wanting to help out. Now it’s down to about 75. We plan to be set up here for another four weeks at least.”
Rouse said there were some on her list who were still living in shelters and trying to get their home straightened up on their own, but it was a slow task. Others, who are elderly or disabled, cannot do the work themselves and are depending on the kindness of strangers.
“I had a woman here the other day begging me to get somebody with a backhoe or a dozer just to get her driveway to where she could get to her house,” Rouse explained. “Her husband is a disabled Army veteran and they have no home. There are a lot of people needing help.”
Rouse said their biggest need is able bodied people who aren’t afraid to get dirty and want to pitch in. She added however, they are also in desperate need of dump trucks and other heavy equipment to load and haul away debris or give access to homes with driveway work. She hoped qualified operators of the equipment would also be willing to lend their time and skills to the effort.
To offer your service or volunteer your time. You can start at volunteerwv.org to find a coordination center in all of the flooded areas to receive a work assignment.