Polk County mudslides: Residents recover while FEMA deliberates
As the Wards and their neighbors continue to dig themselves out,
N.C. Gov.
The rain event began
For the family of
"When I drive through there I see that night over and over. Nothing has changed; obviously the road is passable now, but I can see it all just as it was," Levi said. "I'm not sure how the others are holding up; I think they would be similar to us. As for my family, we are hanging on to one moment, waiting for the next -- trying not to linger on what we have lost, remembering what we still have."
She added: "It's hard when there has been no real closure and no way to move on."
Waiting on help
For some, a
One thing officials are hoping for is the declaration to treat the incident as a single event, making it easier for the county to meet the threshold of affected residents that would qualify it as a disaster, he said.
For example, if that threshold were 25 homes damaged, it would be more likely the county get the declaration for a single event compared to if the weeks-long rain and flooding were treated as two events, which would double that threshold to 50.
"For the residents who weathered them, these storms weren't individual rainfalls, but a major weather event from which they are still recovering," Burr wrote.
The county is hoping to get some assistance for its expenses, too, the largest being overtime and manpower costs for the roughly three-week period during and following the storm, Pittman said. There was also close to
"We're kind of at a standstill waiting to hear back from them," he said.
Since the storm,
Looking ahead
Grass is starting to spring up from the flat, silty dirt that covered font yards up and down the highway near the Wards' home.
Neighbors' driveways have been repaired at their connection to the asphalt, itself chipped and scarred from state
At the Ward's property, work is ongoing to repair the front porch that was covered in about a foot of mud and to replace damaged siding. They're grateful to NCDOT for digging out their front yard, but with the recent heat they haven't had much luck getting plantings to take root.
The Wards have already spent thousands repairing their home, and they were one of the few in the neighborhood to have flood insurance on their property -- because of the river in their backyard, not due to mudslide risk.
On the night of the mudslide, the couple had been in downtown
They turned around and went to stay with
The next morning,
"I couldn't get to my house for several days, actually," he said. "It's been very difficult."
On their front porch they had more than a foot of mud up against the front door, with trees, rocks and mud sitting against the house.
"The DOT really helped us out -- Pam and I -- tremendously,"
Without the DOT he said they wouldn't have known where to start, and still today they sometimes feel like they're not making any progress -- until they look back at photos from right after the storm.
The Wards had to replace their septic system, crushed by debris, and are still working to get the front porch repaired, along with siding and a window replaced. One of their major concerns now is that they've had no communication from the state as to what actions are being taken to make sure something like this doesn't happen again.
"You kind of hesitate to go throw a lot of money back into your property when we (can) come home from dinner again and our yard's filled with rock and mud again,"
The couple sent a certified letter to
"You don't really read your policy until you have a catastrophe," he said. "But when you read everything afterward, the state has allowed the insurance companies to come in and put so many limitations and nonpayment abilities on these policies of things that can actually happen."
They said their insurance adjuster said he hadn't seen anything like it since Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
After all they've been through, the Wards still consider themselves luckier than other folks in the community, saying the real tragedy and the biggest losses of the event are the lives that were lost.
"Everything else can be rebuilt,"
___
(c)2018 Times-News, Hendersonville, N.C.
Visit Times-News, Hendersonville, N.C. at www.blueridgenow.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
BRIEF: Sinkhole forms on Sunset Avenue
EDITORIAL: No reason to scrap coverage of pre-existing conditions
Advisor News
Annuity News
Health/Employee Benefits News
Life Insurance News