‘This Is A Yo-Yo’; COVID-19 Hits Families Still Suffering From Hurricane Florence

May 7--BURGAW -- When Jacqueline Hand grows tired of sharing a 31-foot-long travel trailer with her daughter and grandson, she walks around her under-construction home and sits on the front porch.

Hand lives on Whitestocking Road in Burgaw, which had heavy flooding during 2018's Hurricane Florence. Although the house is elevated several feet, floodwaters still rose to the second-story window pane.

"It was terrible. I've never seen that much water before," said Hand, who has lived in the area for 43 years.

Like many on Whitestocking Road and throughout Pender County, Hand has waited almost 20 months to come home after Hurricane Florence. Now, they are living through a totally different kind of disaster: The COVID-19 pandemic.

While Florence survivors are dealing with the added economic ramifications of the coronavirus, the highly contagious disease has just about stopped the efforts of volunteers who were helping to rebuild their homes.

As they struggle through this public health crisis for which staying home is supposed to be the best protection, hurricane survivors are often living in trailers, staring at their half-rebuilt houses just feet away and wondering when the pandemic will end so they can finally finish rebuilding.

"You're talking about a situation where people may be facing extra costs with less money in their pocket and less availability of aid. I really worry that that combination drags out recovery even longer and makes the process even more difficult not just in terms of costs and health risks," said Jennifer Trivedi, an assistant professor at the University of Delaware's Disaster Research Center who is focused on recovery.

"It's hard mentally and emotionally. It's hard both on a personal level and a larger community level,"

On a recent sunny day, Hand sat on her porch, the front door ajar. Nearby, boxes of cabinets were piled up in the room that will one day become her kitchen again.

For six months after Florence, Hand and nine family members lived at her mother's three-bedroom house. Then she and her immediate family moved to a FEMA trailer.

In March, FEMA ended its temporary housing assistance program and Hand bought a trailer so she could return to her own property.

For the first year after the storm, Hand wasn't able to find a contractor. By the time her calls were returned last fall, Pender had stopped giving free building permits.

Once construction started, Hand used volunteers to try to keep costs low. They painted, helped with flooring and did other work the family couldn't. Two-man volunteer crews from DART-ILM, a rebuilding organization out of Wilmington, are still coming, but Hand is paying contractors for most of the labor.

Hand estimates she has spent $15,000 to $20,000 rebuilding. That's most of the insurance payment she received for the flooded house.

"I haven't had to use my savings, but right now we're low," Hand said. "I mean it really has made a big bite in it. And I I don't know how much further I can go with rebuilding, I'll put it that way, I don't know how much further I can go."

Michelle Vollmer, a resource specialist for DART, said Hand has remained calm even when rebuilding becomes frustrating.

"The underlying determination and motivation she has is inspiring to me," Vollmer said. "She's just very focused on the end product."

Hand hopes her home is finished by May 23.

But she admits to being stressed by the rebuild and now the pandemic. Not being able to find groceries and basic supplies, she said, actually causes more strain than preparing for a storm. And it's hard to stock up on food while living in a trailer because of the small refrigerator and what Hand calls her "Easy Bake Oven."

"Sometimes you feel like you lost your dog, your best friend. It's a down feeling. ... But I don't want to lose sleep over it because I got somewhere to sleep," Hand said.

Volunteers depart due to coronavirus

Groups like Baptists on Mission, Mennonite Disaster Service and the United Methodist Church's Disaster Ministries are working in flood-damaged Eastern North Carolina. In mid-March, though, those groups all sent volunteers home due to concerns about COVID-19.

"We felt like we had to do it even though we didn't want to do it," said Richard Brunson, the director of N.C. Baptists on Mission.

Baptists on Mission was working on about 220 homes at the time, and the Methodists were working on 100 more. Some day workers are still volunteering, but there have been no large crews.

Many homeowners are worried workers won't come back when restrictions are lifted, said Al Miller, director of the UMC North Carolina Conference's Disaster Ministries, adding his team could be the third to work on a still-unfinished house.

Miller said people have worried that the group isn't coming back. "Well, yes we are," Miller said.

In Burgaw and Pollocksville, the Methodist crews were coordinating with Mennonite Disaster Service teams. Larry Stoner, the Mennonite Disaster Service's regional operations coordinator, said he doesn't expect workers to return until October at the earliest. Even then, crews could be limited to about a dozen volunteers, and everyone might come from the same place to try to limit the coronavirus' spread

Brunson and Miller expect to resume operations in coming weeks, albeit with smaller crews.

The Methodist disaster teams expect to start re-opening their 15 volunteer centers around May 11, with the number of people living at a site reduced from 40 or 60 to 10 or 15. Workers will be required to wear masks and gloves at all times, Miller said, and homeowners will need to avoid contact.

"The thing that scares me to death is that I'll have a volunteer come in from out of town or out of state and get sick here. Or I'll have a volunteer come in and all of a sudden the client gets sick," Miller said.

Baptists on Mission can house up to 900 volunteers across facilities in Burgaw, Lumberton, New Bern, Rose Hill and Wilmington.

When overnight stays begin again, facilities will be limited to 10 people per building, said Bill Martin, the Baptists' Florence rebuild coordinator. Even after restrictions are eased, Brunson added, there will likely be limits of about 50 volunteers at camps that can house 150 or 200 volunteers.

"We're going to want to keep making sure the volunteers are safe," Brunson said. "We're housing and feeding them and typically they're in pretty close proximity to lots of other people."

'Then the virus hit'

Christina Pepper and Ken Calvert were among the people hoping those volunteers would help them finish rebuilding. Their family's Atkinson home was supposed to house eight people including their three young boys, Calvert's sister and her two children. They moved in two months before Florence, spending every dollar they had on a house that then flooded -- even though it was sitting on top of a hill and being elevated about five feet.

In early March, Calvert and his father had finished tearing out 92 bags of insulation and were starting to rebuild the floor when an Amish team arrived, the first rebuilding help the family has had. That crew replaced the floor and insulation in six hours, later installing sheet rock throughout the house.

"I was finally starting to get my hopes up," Pepper said. "And then the virus hit."

The volunteers left on March 13, telling the family they were worried about getting stranded if airports closed. Calvert asked them to leave construction materials behind so he could keep working, but they couldn't.

"If they had just been able to get us the material, we could have gotten the house finished while we were stuck at home," Pepper said. "At least that way the kids would have been in a nice clean house instead of a little tiny camper."

Now, the family doesn't know when they will get the materials to rebuild the house or if they will have help again. That uncertainty weighs heavy on survivors, said Michelle Green of the Pender County Long Term Recovery Group.

"You have no control over (the pandemic). You don't know when it's going to end," Green said. "At this point, (families) have no idea if someone's coming to help them in a month or a year. The stress is pretty overwhelming."

The family's house stands well above the rest of their 1.97-acre plot. Two campers are parked alongside it, with Pepper and Calvert's family living in one, Calvert's father in another. Calvert's sister and her adult children live in a small building tucked into the property's corner. Everyone bathes in an outdoor shower Calvert built, water warmed by a five-gallon water heater that is about the size of a construction bucket.

A pair of pigs run around a pen with some goats. Calvert was planning a celebratory pig roast for when rebuilding was finished. But now, he said, "I'm thinking those hams are looking mighty tasty."

Inside, the house is all plywood floors and unpainted sheet rock. A bedroom on the end closest to the campers has been converted into a temporary play space, allowing the three boys -- 11 years old, 3 years old and 18 months -- some room to roam.

"We got tired of tripping over their toys," Calvert said.

Pepper is a stay-at-home mom, homeschooling Jadon, 11, and taking care of the two younger boys. Jadon hasn't listened well lately, and Pepper thinks it's probably because he's been unable to visit friends or go to the playground.

Before Florence, Calvert was working at the Dollar General in Burgaw, but said he lost his job when the county was still flooded. Since then, he briefly worked for FedEx but has largely done odds and ends while focusing on rebuilding. Calvert's father, Ken Calvert, Sr., chips his monthly social security check in to help support the family.

Earlier this year, a contractor working on the house earlier this year asked the younger Calvert if he knew how to build a platform holding up an air conditioner. Calvert did and asked the contractor if he could do the same work at other houses.

The contractor agreed, and Calvert started shortly before the coronavirus hit. He's built one platform in the past month.

"I was finally starting to get a little hope," Pepper said. "I was like, 'Oh, you're starting to make money regularly,' and then all of a sudden, bam! Every time we get up, it comes down. My friend says you should write a book, you've been up and down and up and down like a roller coaster."

"It isn't a roller coaster. This is a yo-yo," Calvert said.

And Calvert is eyeing this year's hurricane forecast warily. He's worried about another storm, particularly with his family living in a leaky camper.

"If it ruins what we've already done inside the house, I think the mentality is going to be just cutting my loss and starting over from scratch," Calvert said. "I'll probably be my dad's age before we can afford to do something like this again."

Ongoing recovery

When storms come through Pender County, Jennifer Witkowski's phone starts buzzing with clients experiencing post-traumatic stress. Witkowski is an outpatient therapist with Black River Family Health Practice, where she provides care to Atkinson and other under-served, flood-damaged parts of the county.

"A lot of people are really struggling," Witkowski said. "We all thought (stay-at-home) was going to be two weeks, and everyone was mentally OK with two weeks. Now, it's looking like it's a more uncertain future. Just the fact that it's going to be a new normal for an unknown amount of time is really hitting a lot of people."

Vollmer is also worried about her clients.

Many residents in the Whitestocking area, where Hand lives, have been there for decades and weathered several storms. It is common to find people rebuilding from Florence who did the same thing after 1999's Hurricane Floyd. Community members who would often gather to help with recovery now can't because of COVID-19, Vollmer said.

"It's a big community gathering to help people recover from (flooding) and that's part of the plan that's in place," Vollmer said. "When this coronavirus came and you can't be around each other, that puts stress on your support system. It changes things drastically."

Vollmer wants emergency measures put into place to help the Florence victims return to their houses or to finish repairs. One of Vollmer's clients, Arlisha Hill, returned to her Maple Hill home March 14, just before she had to start paying rent for the FEMA trailer parked in her yard.

The home's kitchen is mostly finished, as is a bedroom and the living room. But two bedrooms remain unfinished, and tufts of pink insulation remain hanging from the unfinished ceiling in parts of the house. Outside, tarps drape the roof, and one of the boards holding them down has curved upward, nails barely clinging to the roof.

"She's tarped well, but dear goodness, she needs that roof," Vollmer said.

Hill hoped to finish rebuilding by May 3, her birthday. The day came and went with the roof still tarped, more work yet to be done.

"That's a product of life, what can I say?" Hill said.

Hill is thankful for what she does have, though, a lesson she says she learned while throwing away a trash bag of soggy shoes and piles of pocketbooks after Florence.

"I don't value stuff like I used to," Hill said. "A lot of things I had, I didn't really need. So it has taught me to value what I have because one day it'll be gone."

Now, Hill spends her days planting and caring for hostas and geraniums and verbenas without worrying that someone from FEMA is coming to check on their trailer. She also thinks about the coronavirus and what people are going to learn from the ongoing disaster.

"A lot of times things happen that we don't understand, but I feel like some good is going to come out of this -- not only for me but for other people, too," Hill said. "And that's what I'm thinking over: What is the good that's going to come of this?"

This story is a collaboration between the News & Observer and Shoresides, a Working Narratives media platform providing content for North Carolina's coastal region. Audio was produced by Sarah Sloan and Laura Bratton with a soundscape by Elisheba Ittoop.

This reporting is financially supported by Report for America/GroundTruth Project and The North Carolina Local News Lab Fund, a component fund of the North Carolina Community Foundation. The News & Observer maintains full editorial control of the work. To support the future of this reporting, subscribe or donate.

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