Three shop students and their teacher from a West Virginia high school are working this summer to build furniture for the new Intermediate Court of Appeals courtrooms.
Three shop students and their teacher from a West Virginia high school are working this summer to build furniture for the new Intermediate Court of Appeals courtrooms.
Herbert Hoover High School in Clendenin won the bid to produce benches, podiums and tabletops for the main courtroom in Charleston and five satellite courtrooms.
The satellite courtrooms in Grant, Lewis, Morgan, Raleigh and Wetzel counties will allow parties to virtually argue cases.
The court was created last year to hear appeals of civil judgments from circuit courts.
The main bench is being made of walnut and will seat up to five judges, while the satellite benches are made of cherry and can be linked to the main courtroom, the Supreme Court said in a news release.
Some members of the Supreme Court and Intermediate Court of Appeals visited the shop this month to discuss details.
The students — Kole Johnson, Josh Stuart and Lane Ramsey — are working on the project during the summer and being paid $15 an hour, the release said.
“You guys wanted them to do the work and they are,” Hoover shop teacher Tim Meyer told the court officials. “They could set up a cabinet shop and make a living at this.”
It was threatening to rain in the town of Clendenin as Mayor Kay Summers showed U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito around, highlighting the progress the town had made since the devastating floods inundated Elk River communities in June 2016.
Summers showed off some of the local economic development and tourism projects, and continued efforts to address lingering issues caused by the 2016 flood, including senior housing apartments, kayak rentals, Airbnbs and the Elk River Trail. Clendenin was one of the four hardest-hit towns during the 2016 flood.
“The flooding in 2016 devastated Clendenin and the surrounding area, and it continues to impact the way businesses and the local economy function today,” Capito said. “Fortunately, Mayor Summers has remained laser-focused on utilizing our state’s natural resources and beauty, such as the Elk River, to spur economic development and bring both visitors and business to the local community.”
Capito noted that she did not vote for the American Rescue Plan, but said she thinks the monies coming to the state would be available to help Clendenin continue rebuilding and removing dilapidated homes and other buildings.
Summers said that there are problems still with residents getting money they are owed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“For us to get approved for anything with FEMA, it takes six or eight months,” she said.
One of the biggest remaining projects is the tear down and removal of the old Clendenin Elementary School. Summers said she expects that to happen soon.
“I deeply appreciate Senator Capito’s visit to Clendenin today to see how far we’ve come,” Mayor Summers said. “Her continued support is vital as we work to make Clendenin a vibrant town once again.”
Businessman A. W. Cox died on September 4, 1964. He was 79 years old.
The Roane County native attended a one-room school through the eighth grade. And, by 17, he was operating his father’s sawmill. After a brief teaching career, he got a part-time job at a store in Clendenin in northern Kanawha County. While working there, Cox decided to make a career of retail sales. He moved to Charleston in 1914, when he was 29, and bought out a downtown department store. It became the first in a chain of 21 A. W. Cox Department Stores in West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky.
In the 1920s, he partnered with Wehrle Geary to found two Charleston landmarks: Their Diamond Department Store opened in 1926 on the site of the former capitol building, and, in 1929, they opened the nearby Daniel Boone Hotel, which became headquarters for out-of-town state legislators and eventually hosted celebrities ranging from Bob Hope to Elvis Presley to Bob Dylan.
A. W. Cox is also remembered as a prominent philanthropist who gave money to several churches and to Morris Harvey College—today’s University of Charleston.
Demolition crews started tearing down Herbert Hoover High School in Kanawha County on Monday. The high school was damaged by high waters during the 2016 flood.
According to Briana Warner, Communications Director for Kanawha County Schools, a new high school is expected to be completed in 2021.
Herbert Hoover High School students currently attend school in portables outside of Elkview Middle School. The portables are fenced in and all linked by a covered pier or decking system. The portables include full chemistry and other science labs, smart TVs, a shop classroom, and commons area with a covered plaza.
The demolition and clean up for the old high school building is expected to be completed by this fall.
“I know it was raining hard when I got off the interstate.”
Richard Wolfe said he doesn’t remember a lot about the evening of June 23, 2016. He was visiting his sister in Charleston when he decided to heard toward his home of more than 70 years on Koontz Street in Clendenin during a severe storm that would result in historic levels of flooding for the community.
“When I got off the interstate, the water was covering over the park and ride and I turned around and went back to Charleston,” he said. “I knew I couldn’t get into Clendenin.”
That was on Thursday. It was Sunday before Wolfe was able to return to his home where he said everything in the house was turned over.
He remembered a utility trailer had floated into the upstream side of his home and a small camping trailer into the downstream side, trailers he’d never seen before, and there was “mud everywhere.”
Wolfe, who has been living with his sister for the past year, will soon be back in his Clendenin home, but it won’t be the same house he lived in for seven decades.
Nearly a year after the devastatingly high waters covered his home in mud and debris, a crew of 6 Mennonite men have started to build a new house in the same place his home once stood.
The men were laying row after row of concrete block for the new house’s foundation on Tuesday afternoon, scraping the excess mortar squeezed from the seams between each one, as Wolfe watched from a front porch across the street.
Orie Lahman brought the small group from Indiana to Clendenin on Monday and by Tuesday, they had almost completed the foundation. Lahman said once that’s done, his crew will return to Indiana and another group will take over Wolfe’s construction.
Then in a few weeks, Lahman will return with a larger group to start on another house down the street.
“We like to bring in about 20 people, young people and adults, and work and try to build the whole house in a little more than a week maybe,” he said.
Lahman said it won’t be move-in ready after a week, but his team of Mennonite disaster volunteers can take it from a bare foundation to a home with hung drywall in that time.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Richard Wolfe looks on as a group of Mennonite volunteers rebuild his home across the street from this porch on Koontz St. in Clendenin.
Wolfe’s home is one of ten being rebuilt in the community of around 1,200 people 20 minutes north of Charleston.
Funding for the homes has come partially from awards from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, but largely from nonprofit organizations like Greenbrier County’s Neighbors Loving Neighbors, the United Way of Central West Virginia, and the West Virginia Rotary Club, all organized under the West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, or VOAD.
Jenny Gannaway, VOAD’s president and executive director, said it’s the coordination of efforts that’s making the rebuilding process possible.
“One person cannot do it all, it takes everybody I may have the funding that I can put on the table, but without someone an organization doing the case management or another organization to build the home, then my funding is not going to to as far,” she said.
“So, by all of us coming together and working together, we are able to stretch our dollars and accomplish a lot more.”
Gannaway and representatives of the other voluntary agencies involved in funding the homes broke ground on the project in front of Wolfe’s property Tuesday.
Gannaway said VOAD has identified four families, including Wolfe, to take the new homes and is working to find the additional six.
FEMA– the Federal Emergency Management Agency– is well known for its individual housing assistance program- a federal program that helps homeowners and renters who have lost their housing and belongings in natural disasters, but the agency has another program that helps states and local governments rebuild.
The application deadline for FEMA’s public assistance program was Monday and many small communities throughout the state are dependent on those funds after June’s historic flooding.
Richwood, W.Va.
In the Cherry River just outside of Richwood, a concrete dam creates a small waterfall. The water flows over the dam, down massive, sand colored rocks and fills two crystal clear swimming holes. The scene is idyllic, but the sound is not so ideal.
Behind the dam is a massive metal pipe that served as the intake for Richwood’s public drinking water system. But that pipe was damaged in late June when heavy rains caused large rocks to rush down the river. Those waters later flooded many parts of Richwood. Now, a temporary pump sits next to one swimming hole, pumping water to the city’s taps.
“We’re going to get another one that’s boxed,” Richwood Mayor Bob Henry Baber explained over the noise of the pump, “and also that might take us through the winter because this one won’t and we’re not sure how fast we’re going to get this fixed up here on the intake.”
Baber estimates his town in total suffered more than $15 million in damage to public infrastructure and government buildings, but the loss of both the Richwood Middle and High Schools will make the total much higher.
Clendenin, W.Va.
But it’s not just Richwood that suffered millions of dollars in damage to public infrastructure. Gary Bledsoe is the Mayor of Clendenin in Kanawha County.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Clendenin Mayor Gary Bledsoe speaks with FEMA PIO Tom Kempton just a week after heavy rains caused historic flooding in his town.
“It could be pushing as high as $2 million. It’s well over a million now with just what we’ve turned in so far,” Bledsoe said.
That money will be needed for repairs to road slips, the restoration of its community rec center, and rehabilitation of the first floor of city hall. For now, the mayor’s office is in a garage around the corner.
FEMA’s Public Assistance Program
Communities like Richwood and Clendenin can’t pay for those repairs on their own, though. Both mayors say after June’s floods they’re not sure how they’re even going to make payroll through the end of the year, let alone replace a $250,000 rec center. That’s where FEMA’s Public Assistance program comes in.
“Public Assistance is to repair the public infrastructure, those large items that particularly in this disaster such as schools, bridges, roads, the infrastructure that’s been so severely hit in this state because of the flooding,” FEMA Public Information Officer Tom Kempton explained.
So far, the total damage to roads and bridges in flood affected counties is estimated at more than $54 million by the Department of Transportation.
The West Virginia School Building Authority says a new high school costs around $30 million and a new middle or elementary school from $5-10 million. At least five schools in two counties have been closed as a result of the storm.
Credit Kara Lofton / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Cleaning equipment sits outside the entrance to Richwood High School which will not reopen this fall.
Kempton explained it’s these types of infrastructure and public needs that will quickly escalate the total price of recovery. Through the public assistance program, FEMA will pay 75 percent of the cost for public projects. Normally, the state matches with 25 percent, but Governor Tomblin has asked the federal government to bump the match up to 90/10.
Tomblin representatives said last week total damage estimates must reach more than $250 million before FEMA will grant the higher matching rate, but Kempton said West Virginia’s economic climate will also play a role in that decision.
“If you look at the kind of damage within, say Kanawha County where they have a large range of very expensive projects, schools that have been pretty much destroyed, those are going to be prioritized and does the county have that match?” he said.
“Can the county come up with 35 percent of the cost to redo all those facilities? That’d be very difficult for even a wealthy county to do.”
Restoration
Many of the flood affected communities were struggling with insufficient infrastructure and public buildings before the storm. Mayor Baber said that was certainly the case with his sewer system.
Credit Ashton Marra / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Richwood Mayor Bob Henry Baber surveys the damage to a home a hillside collapsed into after heavy rains.
FEMA has been clear- they will pay to restore damaged infrastructure, leaving communities with something equal to what they had before, but Baber worries that won’t be enough.
“What does that mean when you’ve got a system that’s so antiquated? I mean, we’re putting patches on patches on patches so this is hard to know what’s going to happen here,” Baber said.
“We’ve reached the point where I just don’t know how many more patches we can put on patches. How many more band aids can you put on band aids when you’re hemorrhaging?”
The deadline for communities to file for public assistance through FEMA was Monday, August 8.
State revenue officials say even if West Virginia does not receive the 90/10 match from FEMA for those projects, there is enough cash in the Rainy Day Fund to help struggling communities recover.
