Paperwork clogs flood recovery in south Monroe

Two uneven wooden chairs sit side-by-side on Elizabeth Splond's patio.

The 91-year-old sits in one with a rotary bakelite phone in reach on the other. For the past several months, Splond has spent many of her days on the patio, using the phone to take care of her business. She can't spend time in her home of 30 years until damage caused by the March flooding is repaired.

"I'm here most every day when I feel up to walking from the neighbor's house over to this house, but it's not every day that I feel like I can do it," Splond said.

When floodwaters first began to rise from the J-1 canal behind her home in March, she climbed into her green pickup truck and drove to the higher end of her street, sleeping in her cab and thinking maybe she would be able to return in the morning — a morning that has not yet dawned. When the waters receded, she was able to obtain help with removing ruined items from her residence and cleaned her home with supplies provided through a local charity. She tried to stay at home then and became ill, spending two days in the hospital for throat problems.

"That mold like to have put me away," Splond said. "I would be happy if I could sleep in my own house again. I ain't slept here since March. I came and tried to stay, but I didn't know the mold was that bad on your body. That is why I'm weak and sick. I stayed here at least two good weeks before I knew the mold would get all in your lungs and everything."

Splond said she had flood insurance, but her initial claim was denied. She filed an appeal and planned to provide her insurer with a requested itemized statement on Thursday. She said an appraiser had to go through her home and provide a listing of the amount of damage sustained in each room of the house.

Inside her Ockley Drive residence, wood paneling is warped and patches of mold are present. The home had been elevated in recent years, she said, gesturing to evident work on the foundation, but it wasn't enough to keep out floodwaters.

"It was more this time than it had ever been," she said. "More water and more problems than its been since I've been here."

Splond is one of many residents on the southside facing issues with paperwork, Police Juror Pat Moore said.

"There were people who, for whatever reason, didn't have a will — didn't properly handle succession," Moore said. "They've been living in property and homes for years and years and because they couldn't produce and show they owned that home, they ended up not getting help."

She highlighted individuals like Splond who tried to re-enter houses battling mold and those who are still displaced because of their status as tenants in areas with a large number of renters.

"What I see is areas where there are apartments and the owners are trying to repair them and trying to fix them, but that is a long process," Moore said. "...A lot of the landowners were also flooded and trying to repair their homes before they could address anything else."

Many tenants were able to obtain assistance from the Red Cross and government agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration, with assistance programs targeting renters, but a percentage remained who did not qualify for any help.

Throughout her district, she estimates as many as 20 percent of her constituents were not able to obtain assistance, because of either issues with documentation or similar problems. In the future, she hopes to hold educational classes advising individuals about the need to properly plan wills and retain important paperwork.

Two streets down from Splond, Gertrude Scott also lives mere feet from the J-1 canal. Her property has flooded four times over the past several years. She has become an expert at navigating through the paperwork associated with insurance claims and maintains a flood insurance policy.

When Moore visited in March in the days following the flood, Scott was already cleaning and ventilating her home and preparing claim documents. All of her salvageable possessions were stored in a 8-by-10-foot pod in the yard, and she secured a contractor to come in and tear out the lower portion of her wall before mold could spread.

"It's devastating after you lose everything and have to start over," Scott said. "It takes a lot of a prayer and a lot of hard work."

Scott stayed with family as many of the repairs to her home were completed and then set to scheduling appointments to have replacement furnishings delivered and appliances replaced. However, little things she needs for her home still pop up.

"Once you've been through it, you say, 'What do I do now?'" Scott said. "You look at your losses. I was thinking 'It's going to be winter in a few weeks. I don't have any blankets.' It all adds up."

In her location, Scott said flooding has become a recurring problem as new developments have started displacing more water and sending it down to homes at a lower level via the drainage canal that rises behind her home. Many of the homes in her neighborhood have transitioned to Section 8 housing since she first moved in in 1976 and have been repaired to house new tenants.

"I don't think I could go through all of this again," she said. "It's too overwhelming and it gets worse and worse."

Selling isn't an option she considers possible since her home has been through so many floods, but she hopes she doesn't have to face another one.

"There is nothing I can do to prevent it (flooding)," Scott said, but advised she does walk through the neighborhood and pick up trash a couple of times a week in an effort to keep the drains clean, and she reports any larger debris that need collected to code enforcement — all ways to improve drainage the next time the water rises.