Community Bulletin
Foot and ankle pain no longer means a long drive. Vandalia Health Foot & Ankle now treats patients in four central West Virginia towns — Buckhannon, Cowen, Elkins and Philippi — part of the network long known as Davis Health System. Read more →
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BUCKHANNON – A recovery group formed in the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina has set up in North Central West Virginia to help families fill out FEMA applications and rebuild their flooded homes.
Bart Tucker, president of the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders, said the group has settled into the Jackson’s Mill State 4-H Camp and plans to remain in the area for several months to help people rebuild after the July 21 and 22 floods.
“We were organized in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. I was living in Northern Virginia at the time, but I felt compelled to respond to Katrina. More than 1,800 lives were lost, and hundreds of miles of Gulf Coastline were destroyed,” Tucker said.
“We went to Biloxi, Mississippi, and we initially were going to stay two weeks,” he said. “We did that, but after a week there, we knew these folks weren’t going to get back in their homes unless we came back, so we started going home for two weeks and raising money, and volunteers coming back for two weeks. We decided that was a lot of driving, so we just stayed. That was the beginning. We’ve now responded to every major hurricane since then.”
Their group also aids communities suffering after floods. They have responded in Tennessee, Kentucky and now West Virginia to help people affected by devastating rains.
The ReBuilders work with homeowners to obtain FEMA funding, which can be used to help rebuild their homes.
“The $4.5 million the governor said FEMA has provided, those are for individual assistance awards, so a homeowner who’s received damage fills out an application, and then they do an assessment of the property,” Tucker said. “Based on that assessment, they award some amount of funding dedicated to home repairs, and that’s generally about a third of what is necessary to rebuild the home using a commercial contractor.”
He said the funding usually covers materials, and then volunteers provide labor.
“Our mission in life is to take those funds and use that to buy construction materials, and we provide the volunteer labor and the construction supervision to oversee the volunteers and rebuild the home.”
They also gather grant funds and fundraise to finish home builds.
“That initial grant is the foundation of the building process, so we help homeowners because it’s a bureaucratic process in so many ways. It’s like a tax return, but FEMA is asking people for documentation, and you’re asking somebody whose house was just flooded for last year’s tax return,” Tucker said. “It’s not a simple process for them, and now it’s online-based, so not everybody is technically savvy enough to manage that process. Some people don’t trust the government enough to go through the process, so we come alongside these folks and help with that application.”
The first rebuild team will enter Upshur County Aug. 23.
“We modernize and replace appliances, electrical systems, plumbing, and one thing we do and really have a passion about is accessibility standards,” Tucker said.
“More than half of the families that we help are 55 and older, so many of them may not need an accessibility feature today, but we can make a judgment about whether they might need one in the future,” he explained. “If the house is all torn apart, it’s a lot easier to widen a doorway and make it a 36-inch doorway, so you have the possibility of putting a wheelchair through that doorway in the future. Or if the person is handicapped today and is crawling in and out of a bathtub, as opposed to a low-threshold shower, then we will install a low-threshold shower just to make the house more usable and safer.”
The Fuller Center is committed to remaining in the area through March, but they hope to remain longer.
“A lot can change between now and then. We would love to stay longer. We worked in North Carolina after Hurricane Florence in 2018, and we just finished working on our last house last year,” Tucker said. “Frequently we run out of funds, so it’s very important to stretch every donated dollar as far as we can. We were just on the phone with Lowe’s here, trying to raise some funds to help us rebuild, and they’re a great supporter in that. And of course we also work with the local vendors to ask them for discounts and those things to help us stretch the dollars.”
People interested in asking for help from the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders can call 337-909-5444 or email Toni@disaster-rebuilders.org.
