Flood victim: ‘Our life can’t go on’ [Lebanon Daily News, Pa.]

March 31--ANNVILLE -- Catherine Eash thought she had her retirement all planned out.

A cozy, one-story brick house tucked next to the Quittapahilla Creek along Route 934 has been her home since she bought it in 1986. She shares it with her 46-year-old son, Dennis, who has a learning disability.

A retired Hershey Medical Center emergency room nurse, Eash, 67, was expecting to enjoy the rest of her life living in the newly remodeled structure.

But Tropical Storm Lee washed those plans away in a matter of hours.

After retiring 10 years ago, Eash began remodeling the home. In 2010, she remortgaged the house and used the savings to update its interior and utilities, including installing new windows, a new kitchen and a new furnace.

Her

last big project was converting a small storage room into a bathroom with an extra-large shower to accommodate her bad back and fibromyalgia maladies.

"This was my forever house," she said. "The operative word is was."

Tropical Storm Lee changed all that. Its torrential rain caused the Quittie to overflow its banks, inundating Eash's basement and flooding her first floor with two feet of muddy water.

"Everything I worked for the last 26 years was gone in seven hours," she recalled.

In addition to most of her possessions, Eash also lost her dream of starting a craft show quilting business.

Although her precious sewing machines were rescued from her basement work room, four years of quilted items she had created for the craft business and many bolts of fabric were ruined by the floodwaters.

"I will never do the craft show thing now," she lamented.

In the flood's immediate aftermath, Eash said, she was overwhelmed by the assistance she received from fellow members of St. Mark Lutheran Church in Annville, who helped her clean up, and her friends at the Lebanon Quilters Guild, who helped her begin rebuilding her life by replacing many of her possessions.

"I belong to the best organization in Lebanon

County -- the Quilters Guild," she said proudly. "They were so generous. I wouldn't have anything if it weren't for them. I cannot thank them enough."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also provided essential relief, Eash said, giving her rental assistance for the tiny four-room apartment in Cleona where she and her son now live.

Eash had flood insurance and received a healthy settlement. But it was not enough to pay for the repairs to the house's foundation, which was cracked and shifted by the force of the rising water.

As much as it pained her, Eash made a decision to sell the home through FEMA's Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

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Established in 1988, the program provides grants to state and local governments for the acquisition and demolition of homes that have received damage in excess of 50 percent of their value, for the purpose of reducing future life and property loss, according to the FEMA website, fema.gov.

Only states receiving federal disaster declarations qualify for the grant program. And, most importantly, local municipalities must opt into the program for their residents to benefit because grant applications to FEMA can only be made on their behalf by the municipality.

Julie Cheney, a community planner for the Lebanon County Planning Department, has been helping to guide many municipalities through the application process.

The program will help remove many older homes that were built before zoning regulations forbid construction in the floodplain, Cheney explained.

"That is what the mitigation grant program is all about," she said, "removing these homes so they (FEMA) don't receive future claims."

How much money will be available for the program is still to be determined.

Under its terms, FEMA will pay 75 percent of the value of the property that has not already been covered by private flood insurance. The grant also includes money for the demolition expense.

The state matches the federal grant with a 22 percent contribution, and participating municipalities are responsible for paying the remaining 3 percent of the cost.

Once the sale is final, the home is removed, and the parcel becomes the property of the municipality. No future building can take place on it, but the open land can be put to use for things like agriculture and recreation.

The FEMA mitigation program is voluntary, and homeowners are free to make repairs to a house that might otherwise be classified as destroyed, Cheney said.

The only property owners forced to give up their homes are those who live in municipalities with a zoning ordinance requiring houses in a floodway to be demolished if they sustain 50 percent damage.

But even then a property owner can settle with his insurance carrier and does not have to enter the FEMA grant program, Cheney said.

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Official numbers are difficult to come by because they are not released by FEMA, but county officials have estimated that 150 homes were destroyed by the flooding in September and could qualify for the program.

A canvassing of local municipalities determined that about 50 homeowners have applied for the program in Lebanon County. They are awaiting FEMA's ruling on whether money will be provided for the purchase of their houses. The total cost would be in the multiple millions of dollars.

Some applied to their municipalities but did not meet the 50 percent damage threshold to qualify.Most of the homes in the mitigation program are along the Swatara and Quittapahilla creeks in a handful of municipalities like North Annville. The township has 19 properties being reviewed for hazard-mitigation funding, the most of any county municipality.

Supervisor Adam Wolfe estimated the total cost of purchasing and demolishing those properties could approach $2 million, and North Annville will have to pay between $40,000 and $50,000.

The exact amount the township will have to pay won't be known until flood insurance settlements are calculated, Wolfe said, because some payments can be counted toward the township's 3 percent match.

The cost would have been higher, he added, if more property owners had applied.

"I'd say there were about 12 who fit into that category and didn't apply," he said.

There are two potential rounds of grant funding. The second round is for homes that sustained damage that was significant but less severe than the first-round applicants.

In South Lebanon, township manager Curtis Kulp said about 40 homes would have qualified for second-round FEMA funding, but the township did not apply on their behalf because it could not afford the match.

"First of all, we are not sure if enough money will be available for the first round, much less the second," he said. "And with a three percent match, that would just be too costly for the township, so we are passing on the second round."

South Lebanon did, however, apply for the grant on behalf of four homeowners in the 700 block of Kiner Avenue whose houses sustained major damage to their foundations and are uninhabitable, Kulp said.

He estimated the total cost of acquiring and demolishing those houses will be $793,000, and the township's share will be about $23,800.

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All of the information on local property values has been sent to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency for review and prioritization, said Tom Hughes, a state hazard-mitigation officer.

"All of the applications for homes that were substantially damaged have gone through a state review, but anything that was not substantially damaged must go through a cost/benefit analysis," he said.

The results of the state's findings are in the process of being forwarded to FEMA for its review, Hughes said.

That process, which normally takes a year, was done in six months, he added, but there is still plenty of work to do before homeowners receive their grants. And they will come through the municipality, which will be responsible for closing on the properties.

"This is not going to happen overnight," Hughes said. "The good news is that the joint-field office (in Harrisburg) is still open and our FEMA counterparts are working here with us."

Waiting for the process to work its way through leaves many people's lives hanging in the balance, said Cheney, the county planning officer.

"They are in limbo," she said. "They obviously can't live in their homes, so they have had to relocate. Some are receiving rental assistance, but lots of them are still paying the mortgage on the property they can't live in."

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Count Eash among them.

Her flood insurance settlement was not enough to pay off her mortgage in Annville, and she is anxiously awaiting word on the FEMA grant.

Meanwhile, she and her son are stuck in their cramped apartment in Cleona.

Eash said she would like to a nicer place, but then FEMA would no longer provide her with temporary rental assistance, so she can't afford to move.

"I lost a lot of things in the house. But I've let go of them," she said. "They were just things. They were irreplaceable, but the memories are still there. Now I'm just ready to get on with my life."

The emotional trauma that comes with being unable to do that is taking its toll, Eash admitted. She blames the stress for causing her son's recent heart attack.

"Most everyone one else is in a position where their houses are repaired, and I'm glad for those people," she said. "But our life can't go on. I think that is the hardest part -- the waiting. ... My future options are not clear to me. I can't even think about the future."

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Here is a list of properties that have applied for Federal Emergency Management Agency Hazard Mitigation Grants, by municipality:

-- North Annville Township 19

-- Annville Township -- 13

-- Swatara Township -- 7

-- East Hanover Township -- 4

-- South Lebanon Township -- 4

-- Jonestown Borough -- 3

[email protected]; 272-5611, ext. 149

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