First of all, we have home internet again! We finally got it back at the end of October. It has gone in and out a few times since then, but it seems to be working overall.
I’m going to try to answer all of the questions from my
last Helene post, emails, etc.
The first thing everyone wants to know is if things are
back to normal. They’re definitely
not. We have times when it feels like
things are normal again, but I don’t think an entire day has been like it was
before.
Everywhere we go, there’s damage. The city and county aren’t able to keep up
with picking up the debris, so there are still trees down all over the
place. People’s ruined belongings are
still piled up next to the street, waiting to be picked up. So many houses were underwater. There’s a lot to pick up.
Most of the parks are still closed. We went a couple of weeks ago to one that was
partially re-opened, and there’s still so much damage. Several of the trails and fields aren’t
open. We took a trail that went under
one of the bridges that was flooded during the storm. We both drive over this bridge almost every
day, and it still seems surreal that the bridge was underwater during the worst
of the flooding. You can see where storm
debris wedged into part of the bridge.
There’s a street sign in a creek.
There’s still a layer of silt on everything that was
underwater. You can see a lot of it on
this tree.
There are still entire roads gone. Some people are still using footbridges and
ATVs to access their communities. We’re
some of the fortunate ones who can drive to home and work. But there are still so many roads that are
down to one lane or don’t have guardrails.
A lot of bridges are still out.
Several bridges are down to one lane or don’t have any kind of
guardrails.
We had our first significant amount of rain since Helene
last week, and it definitely made people a little edgy and anxious. I have a hard time sleeping when it rains at
night. There are still so many things
that aren’t fixed and roads and trees that are barely hanging on. What would otherwise be minor flooding could
potentially cause a lot of damage right now.
Our furnace isn’t fixed yet. We’ve been denied property damage assistance
from FEMA because there was “no property damage reported.” We’ve gone in person to the disaster relief
center, and I’ve called. Everyone agrees
that our application clearly shows property damage. They told us to appeal the decision, so we’re
currently waiting for the decision on our appeal. My sister was nice enough to set up a
fundraiser for us in the meantime.
That brings me to FEMA.
Everyone we’ve dealt with from FEMA has been incredibly nice. And entirely unhelpful. Other people have said the same thing, that
FEMA didn’t help them at all, but it was almost hard to be upset about it
because they were so nice. No one seems
to be able to figure out any kind of pattern or rationale for the assistance
people get from FEMA. I’m only sharing
firsthand stories from people I’ve known for years, but some of the examples
are:
A friend had a very similar thing happen to their
furnace. They received a significant
portion of the cost of the replacement by early October.
One friend was without power for 12 days and lost all of
the food in their fridge and freezer.
They’re on a well, so they also had no water and had to get bottled
water for everything. They have a
medical condition that requires daily nebulizer treatments and had to buy a
generator for that. They submitted a
letter from their doctor stating as much with their FEMA application. They were denied all aid, including help with
food.
Another friend had flooding in their basement. A FEMA inspector came to their house, and
they’ve received what they said is more money than it will likely cost to fix
all of the damage.
So, really, I think if you asked five different people
about their experience with FEMA, you would get five different answers.
A lot of people ask about outside help and media
coverage. Initially, there were people
from all over. There were so many power
trucks from so many different states and even Canada. There were volunteers from all over coming to
help with things. But it has been almost
two months at this point. People had to
go back to their regular lives, and there have been other disasters and
problems.
The optics are different now, too. Initially, there was water everywhere. It’s easy to see that something is wrong when
roads are underwater, and people are in lines for bottled water and MREs. While there is certainly still an
unbelievable amount of damage from floods and landslides, some things look
normal again. Some of the places that don’t have potable water have running water. The towns are no longer underwater, so it doesn’t necessarily look like the infrastructure isn’t back to normal.
Take our house, for example; it looked bad when our crawlspace looked
like this.
It looks normal now, even though it isn’t.
I think, too, everyone thinks of hurricanes as a summertime
problem. I certainly never would have
thought about hurricane damage causing significant problems heading into
wintertime. This article is a good
example of what some of the smaller towns are facing.
In reading over this post, I feel like it has turned into a
total whine fest, which was not my intention.
We are definitely some of the lucky ones. Our house is still standing, and we got
through the immediate aftermath with the best neighbors in the world.
And there are moments of normalcy every day now.
The chickens still come over every day for their snack.
The cats are still being adorable.
We all know that things will eventually get back to
normal. And I promise my next post will
be more cheerful.
