CLENDENIN, W.Va. — Mayor Kay Summers admits that her town still needs a lot of help, three and a half years after the June 2016 floods.
Officials with the state’s long-term flood recovery efforts, West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (VOAD), were in Clendenin on Tuesday for an outreach help event to make sure anyone eligible for housing and bridge replacement through RISE West Virginia is enrolled.
Summers told MetroNews that there have been many missed signals by citizens whether with VOAD or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in what they could and couldn’t receive in flood recovery.
“If you don’t have electricity, if you don’t have water and you don’t have gas in your home, and you have holes in the side of your home from the flood, that’s a real problem. We actually have that,” Summers said.
“We have homes that need repaired or be torn down and rebuilt.”
Willy Harper, a resident of Clendenin, was one of the dozens that came to Clendenin City Hall and applied for more help.
He told MetroNews that he got about nine feet of water in his house and the foundation is cracking in different spots.
“I’m just trying to get some help,” Harper said. “I didn’t get hardly anything in the first round so I thought I would come up here and see if they could help me out again.”
“They (VOAD) came in and bought me twenty boards for my porch and a volunteer group came in and out them on. I’m appreciative of that but now I have structural damage. Do I just live with that or do I ask for help again? I am a proud person and this is the last place I wanted to come to.”
Harper expressed gratitude towards many people but also told MetroNews he felt that the process by FEMA has been unfair. He said hundreds of families remain waiting on FEMA money, including his 80-year old grandmother.
“Two weeks ago she tells me that she needs to go look for a job because she has two mortgage payments,” Harper said. “FEMA has said the check is in the mail, the check is in the mail.
“If they would just give her money to get rid of that one mortgage payment, that would free her up a lot. She’s struggling.”
Harper, a 25-year Clendenin resident, said he has no neighbors left following the flood because several houses were completely wiped out and others moved away because of the lack of help.
“A lot of people decided just to move, had their houses torn down and moved. I don’t blame them. If I could have afforded to do that, if I had any sense I would have just taken my FEMA money and left.”
Summers, who has been the mayor for less than one year, admits the town did lose residents and critical resources such as the only grocery store following 2016.
“Some people are going to say we did,” Summers said on losing many citizens.
“I don’t think we lost as many as people think. They had to relocate, maybe just on the Elk River. Some people did move and some people want to move back.”
Summers said it’s her job to continue to rally the town together because it’s the only way they will move along.
“I don’t think we will ever be over it,” Summers said. “Some people are still bitter. Some people are bitter rightfully so and some people are bitter because they haven’t done anything to help themselves.
“I think we have a great town here. We just need to pull together as a team.”
These last rounds of outreach efforts will continue throughout the week in multiple counties. Applicants need to have been affected by the 2016 flood that crushed Kanawha, Roane, Clay, Jackson, Lincoln, Nicholas, Fayette, Summers, Pocahontas, Webster, Monroe or Greenbrier counties.
The upcoming outreach effort events:
January 22: City National Bank of Rainelle, 1218 Main Street, Rainelle; 10 a.m.to noon and White Sulphur Springs City Hall, 589 West Main Street; 2 to 4 p.m.
January 23: Risen Lord Catholic Church, 67 Wallback Road, Maysel; 9:30 a.m. to noon.
January 24: Richwood Public Library, 8 White Avenue, Richwood; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
According to the latest numbers from RISE West Virginia, 108 homes have been rebuilt and completed since the program began.
Active cases under RISE total 381 including 244 requiring total reconstruction, 44 requiring some form of rehabilitation actions, 85 requiring new mobile home replacement, and 8 cases are awaiting initial project type and undergoing the damage assessment process.
For more information on how to get help, call VOAD at 304-553-0927,visit an outreach event or go to RISE’s website.