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Localities Continue To Help With Floods, Looking For More Assistance

The Kanawha County Commission allocated more money to aid flooded communities and is working with state and local officials to secure more.

Fifty-thousand dollars was approved for West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, or VOAD, to help rebuild personal bridges that were destroyed in the flood. Executive Director Jenny Gannaway requested $40,000 but the commission decided to give more.

“We’ve got families in hotels that we’re providing them. One in particular is a young mom with two small children. Her house was destroyed,” Gannaway said at the meeting. “So we’re trying to help her get into a rental property, close to her job. She lost her car and everything. So we are helping families like they get back in.”

Commission President Kent Carper said this is a one-time payment, but that this is an organization he is happy to continue to support.

“Two reasons why we’re going to do this, I think I’m speaking for everyone. Your reputation is just excellent,” he said. “You just know your business, and you’re effective at getting things done.”

The commission estimates the county has spent $200,000 so far and is putting in a request for reimbursement from the state. Carper said he is hoping to receive support from the state.

“I got several of these nice emails from the legislature, from senators wanting to know what they can do,” Carper said. “Well, they can pay the bill!”

The damage assessment process is ongoing. Homes, bridges, creeks, churches, fire stations, and roads were damaged during the flood. Eight homes were destroyed. Individuals and local communities are struggling to pay for the damage.

Federal aid from the Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) could be on the way if the disaster qualifies. Commissioner Lance Wheeler said that they are working to gather and submit that evidence.

“I’ve been working with the state emergency management,” Wheeler said. “They tell us that they believe these numbers are very close to passing that threshold. And we’re positive at this moment that we will get that FEMA declaration. However, you never know how FEMA is going to operate until they do. So we’re just trying to do as much as possible collecting evidence.”

The commission is asking residents in areas affected by the flood to continue to fill out FEMA surveys because they will help their communities qualify for aid. One hundred and sixty-seven have been collected so far. Surveys are available online, by QR code, and there are paper surveys available at the VOAD center in Quincy.

The commission also voted to extend debris pick up to Friday, September 15 and allocated another $100,000 to the effort. During the weekend, the hours for debris clean-up will be 8 a.m. to – 2 p.m., and during the week 8 a.m. to- 3 p.m.

Wheeler said this is needed because residents are still working to clean out, and around, their homes.

“You know we have to remember that this isn’t just trash. This is personal belongings,” Wheeler said. “This is things that people had in their home, loved items that they had and now they have to get rid of,” Wheeler said.

Nearly All 2016 Flooding Recovery Projects Finished, Except Schools

Seven years after the historic floods of 2016, the state has finally completed nearly all of the houses and bridges that were damaged in the deadly flood.

Garner Marks, the general counsel for the West Virginia Development Office, told the Joint Legislative Committee on Flooding that 99 percent of the housing projects, 100 percent of the bridges and 99 percent of the demolition projects had been completed.

“The State of West Virginia was allocated $106,494,000 with 12 years to expand that mitigation funding to fortify resiliency measures to decrease the impact of future flooding events and other natural hazards,” Marks said. “In the same 12 counties that were designated for these disaster recovery funds. those include Clay, Greenbrier, Kanawha, Nicholas, Fayette, Jackson, Lincoln, Monroe, Pocahontas, Roane, Summers and Webster counties, each of these projects has to meet the HUD definition for mitigation, which are those activities that increase resiliency to disasters and reduce or eliminate the long term risk of loss of life injury, damage, to and loss of property and suffering and hardship by lessening the impact of future disasters.”

The state’s response to the flood cleanup was slow initially and the state was even put on notice by FEMA for slow use of the more than $400 million set aside for recovery efforts. Problems with West Virginia Rise were straightened out after the program was turned over to the West Virginia National Guard.

As of June 30, 2023 the program has completed 385 housing projects, 54 bridges that serve 121 homes, and 85 demolition projects working with outside groups like West Virginia VOAD or Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster.

In a separate presentation to the committee, Matt Blackwood, the deputy director of the West Virginia Emergency Management Division, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) agreed to spend more than $400 million for public assistance and flood mitigation in West Virginia.

“You can see we have about $436 million, that we spent approximately $246 million,” Blackwood said. “The remaining about $190 million mainly relates to school projects here in Kanawha County, and also in Nicholas County.”

The unspent money will be declared officially spent once the schools are finalized, Blackwood explained. Members of the committee asked Blackwood to prepare a report for the committee on the status of those schools. Nicholas County has had significant delays causing costs to increase well beyond what was budgeted by FEMA.

As 1 Year Flood Anniversary Approaches, Home Construction Begins in Clendenin

“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.

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.

McDowell Still Recovering from Flood

Although all roads are passable, emergency services in McDowell County are still working to clean up the mess after recent flooding.

Heavy rains Wednesday night washed away roads and flooded the Panther area in McDowell County. The Office of Emergency Services is actively looking for a location for residents to put debris.

Dispatchers say that the West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, also known as WV VOAD, and the American Red Cross are actively determining which areas need service.

Dispatchers say about 100 people have been effected by this flood.

The McDowell Health Department will be offering well testing and tetanus vaccinations early this week. Emergency services say that exposure to flood water alone is not reason to get a vaccine. Only people who have not had a Td booster in the last ten years or five years if they have a severe wound.

Here’s contact information for services in McDowell County:

McDowell County Emergency Services: (304) 436-4106 or (304) 436-6900 | Facebook
McDowell County Health Department: (304) 448-2174
American Red Cross: West Virginia Region: (304) 340-3650
West Virginia VOAD: Website | wvvoad@gmail.com