WATERVILLE, Minn. — The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is setting up in Waterville to help residents whose homes were flooded.
“They already came through town and did an initial assessment, went door-to-door, and then kind of got an idea about how big the problem was and how many people in homes were affected,” said Waterville Mayor Bill Conlin.
He said FEMA plans to set up at the senior center next to city hall. He believes they will be there for at least two months.
Conlin said they will meet with homeowners to decide what they can do to help. He said FEMA is not seeing anyone just yet, but when they do, he said the city will post that information on their website.
“When you’re in a small town like this, you just don’t want anybody to be left behind,” he said.
KARE 11 first caught up with Christa Wolner in June as she was stacking sandbags around her house.
“We fought so hard to keep the water out,” Wolner said.
She said they used 1,300 sandbags to build a 5-foot-tall wall, but the water found a way in. When the water receded, dead fish covered her basement floor.
“As a joke I would say ‘like yeah, I got fish living in basement rent-free right now’,” she said.
Wolner said they had fans running consistently in their basement to dry out the floor, so they could shovel the remaining sludge. She said it was “a dirty daunting task,” but they got it done. Wolner said they got the basement power washed and sanitized.
“We didn’t have a hot water heater. All the electrical needed to be redon because everything was underwater down there, so the electricians came,” Wolner said.
She said they do have flood coverage but not for their personal property. She said it was a sickening blow when her insurance agent told her.
Wolner said she never thought her basement would flood 5-feet. She said fixing her yard will be expensive because they don’t have coverage on their yard.
“One bid that we had just to get the yard back was like $25,000,” she said.
To help cut down the cost, she used her sandbags to create a practical paradise.
“Right now, we got a great sandy area, but we just thought that way, when they do bring in truckloads of work that will offset some of the costs, so we won’t need as much,” she said.
Wolner did get some good news last Friday because they finally got their hot water back.
Mayor Conlin said there’s still a lot of work to be done around the town.
“We still have some street drain issues, and we have a lot of repairs we have to make,” he said.
He said they did learn some lessons in June, they will hopefully help them the next time it floods in Waterville.
With more rain in the forecast, Conlin said he isn’t concerned about flooding.
“Not at all worried right now, the water is down low enough, it’s inside the banks. It’s going to hamper our efforts to clean,” he said.
Wolner can’t help but think about what happened in June.
“Whenever I hear there’s rain in the forecast, it’s kind of like a hold my breath ‘please, no, not again’,” she said