Residents in Southwest Virginia who were hit by flooding during Hurricane Helene may still have months, even years, of rebuilding ahead, even if they were approved for FEMA aid.
A different flood, three years earlier in Buchanan County, killed one woman. And it left dozens of residents without federal assistance from FEMA. Local donations and Mennonite volunteers stepped in to fill the gap.
Like Helene, the floods that swept through Hurley in 2021 were caused by the remnants of a hurricane. Teresa Adkins remembers watching from a hill across the street, as water destroyed her home.
“It washed everything off. We watched doublewides float down the creek, vehicles,” Adkins said. “We lost a lot.”
Hurley is a small community in far Southwest Virginia, very close to West Virginia. In the creek near her home, there’s still debris from the flood, three years later. The remnants of a destroyed red truck are still wrapped around a tree.
After the 2021 flood, Atkins and her husband filed for FEMA assistance, but were denied. No homeowners in Buchanan County were approved, because the damage didn’t meet FEMA’s threshold. In communities where fewer properties are impacted and poorer communities where properties aren’t as valuable, it’s often a challenge to reach the minimum dollar amounts of damage that FEMA requires.
FEMA denied aid for its Individual Assistance program for residents in Buchanan County in 2021, and again in 2022, after a second flood hit. FEMA did release some funding to the state to help with cleanup in Hurley.
Senators Tim Kaine, Mac Warner and representative Morgan Griffith all said they were disappointed by FEMA’s denial of aid for those storms.
Later, after Helene, Kaine said he and other lawmakers have more sway in negotiating assistance in storms where damage affected so many people across several states.
“So we have got a huge coalition of Democratic and Republican House and Senate members who are working on this,” Kaine said. “And I think that is likely to lead us to success on this effort. Whereas the Buchanan effort was difficult because the damage was restricted to a fairly small geographic area.”
For people like Adkins and her family, aid didn’t come from the federal government. They spent months digging mud from their home, hardly sleeping or eating. And when FEMA denied them help, it felt like a slap in the face.
“We didn’t have no insurance on our home,” Adkins said. “If it wasn’t for Mennonites and United Way, we wouldn’t have nothing.”
A volunteer Mennonite organization from Pennsylvania reached out to United Way, asking how they could help. United Way raised money to pay for supplies, and the Mennonites volunteered their labor. They rebuilt Adkins’ home from the ground up, and the homes of seven other families in this neighborhood.
While they were working, Adkins, her youngest son, and her husband, lived in a camper in her yard. Two of her kids stayed with her sister because there wasn’t enough room in the camper.
While the new house was being constructed, her husband got sick and was diagnosed with two types of cancer,
“My husband passed before we got to move in,” Adkins said, sighing. “He was excited but he goes, ‘I’ll not see that home.’ He seen it but he never got to live in it.”
Her husband died December 20th, 2022, the year after the flood.
The trauma of that year still is something Adkins hasn’t fully processed.
“I just try to block things out. That’s how I deal with it, I guess,” Adkins said. “I blocked a lot of things out.”
She has a heavy heart, thinking about victims of Hurricane Helene, and anyone affected by a major flood.
“Just be strong. I mean, that’s about all you can. Just be strong and focus on getting it cleaned back up,” Adkins said. “I never thought it’d hit here, but it did. I mean, it took us out.”
She’s anxious another flood may hit Buchanan County, but she’s grateful for the home the Mennonites built. It’s high enough to withstand a similar storm.
