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A dozen stairs now lead to the front porch of the century-old house, which sits on a new concrete foundation that lifts it more than five feet above the ground and out of the river’s reach.
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Brad Otto carries furniture up the new steps to the Gays Mills home where he and his partner Bryan Banitt are moving back into for the first time in a year. After two severe floods over the last 12 months in Gays Mills Otto and Banitt decided to move back in after having the house elevated on a higher foundation.
PETER THOMSON photo
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The Twin Cities transplants didn’t wait for flood mitigation funds. If they had, the couple would still be out of their home.
Instead, Brad, an X-ray technician, and Bryan, an electronic circuit designer, spent the last year working full-time to rebuild the house and spent their federal flood relief money to pay for the elevation.
Otto and Banitt are home again but their neighbors are not.
Six other houses on their block of Orin Street are vacant. Another has been moved as part of a buyout plan to remove 15 structures from the floodplain.
It’s the same throughout the Crawford County community of 625. Rows of houses sit empty, caked and peeling mud still on the floors. Others are gutted.
Some people have been living with relatives or in apartments elsewhere while repairing their homes or just waiting for word on whether they will qualify for federal hazard mitigation buyouts.
Some simply moved, rather than chance another flood.
Those who stayed now live on virtual islands.
To see stories and photo slideshows from the first days of the flood of 2007, , click here.
“It’s kind of a lonely place,” said the Rev. Pam Lojewski, pastor of Luther Memorial Church. The church repaired the home where she lives and raised it out of the flood plain. But she has only two neighbors left.
Over the years, Gays Mills earned a reputation as a scrappy river town that could take whatever the fickle Kickapoo dished out.
Old timers remember the big floods, like 1951, 1978. They rebuilt and got on with life.
Same thing a year ago.
Many figured they were good for another 30 years. But nature delivered a cruel one-two combination, socking the community with a second 100-year flood just 10 months later.
Now, as they mark the anniversary of the first flood, they wonder whether Gays Mills as they know it will survive.
Relocation questions
After the flood of Aug. 19 - 20, the village board appointed a recovery committee to determine the best candidates for buyout and flood-proofing funding.
Dale Klemme is a community development specialist overseeing the process. He said the direction was to keep buyouts to a minimum in order to preserve the tax base. They approved 15, a tenth of the village’s single family homes.
But after the second flood this summer, the talk turned to moving everything to higher ground, as the nearby village of Soldiers Grove did three decades ago.
This option was especially popular among Main Street business owners who, unlike individuals, don’t get emergency grants from the federal government. The only help for them is low-interest loans, which many can’t afford.
Christopher Smith, who owns Blackhawk Auto, said his only option after the August flood was a loan from the Small Business Administration. The catch: He would have to secure it with his home.
“I, for one, cannot go through another event like this,” Smith said at a June town meeting. “There is no help for businesses.”
His call to move the village was met by applause.
But two months later, there are more questions than answers.
Ashley and Miguel Morga’s Park Street home sustained $90,000 in damage in August, just a month after they had moved in.
They had insurance, and made the repairs, “hoping we’d have 30 years before the next one,” Ashley said.
“We were fine until June.”
They ripped out everything they had just replaced and moved to temporary housing on the ridge. They hope to resettle in Soldiers Grove.
Their home, meanwhile, sits vacant as they wait for the village to come up with a plan.
Searching for a plan
The planning process begins in earnest this week with a series of community meetings led by long-term recovery experts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who will spend the next three months advising village leaders and steering the process.
The idea is not to tell the village what to do but to help residents come up with a vision, a consensus and a realistic funding plan, said Pieter de Jong, the FEMA team leader.
At the first meetings, called charrettes, residents will learn about alternatives including simple acquisition and demolition of buildings in the flood path, a levee system and partial or total relocation and try to agree on which to pursue.
“It’s got to be their plan,” said Chuck Heltsley, another member of the FEMA team. “Their plan.”
On hold
FEMA has allocated 90 days for the initial planning process, though executing the plan could take much longer.
That three-month wait is unsettling to many, who have already been out of their homes for a year.
“The prospect of going into winter with so many households in limbo is not very comforting,” Klemme said. “I’m the one who has to look them in the eye and tell them to hang on just a little longer.”
Village board President Larry McCarn said he thinks the majority of people are leaning toward relocation, but the village will have to come up with a way to help fund it.
That is part of the FEMA relocation team’s job, de Jong said. Federal, state, and private funding all will be sought to minimize the local burden.
That’s important, as the median household income in Gays Mills is only two-thirds what it is statewide.
“We can’t put a financial burden on these people,” McCarn said.
The floods’ toll is starting to show in other ways, too. Last month, the number of people visiting the food pantry jumped nearly 20 percent, Lojewski said.
“This isn’t a community that has a lot of options or money,” she said.
While the village is still waiting on federal funds to floodproof 18 properties, Klemme said those measures might not make sense if the long-range plan is relocation.
“It may be harder to justify the acquisition of a property if the feds have just spent $30,000 to floodproof it,” he said. “It may be harder sell to the feds, and harder sell to the resident. Why do I want to move now?”
It has a future’
Kate Vereschagin still doesn’t have a kitchen floor or any neighbors but she has hopes for her town, which she calls “a little piece of paradise,” and one of the few places where property taxes are affordable.
In February 2007, after more than two decades in the nearby countryside, she and husband Greg decided to downsize. They bought an old house on Park Street, and Greg, a furniture maker, built a shop in the back yard.
Eight months later, water filled the Vereschagin’s basement and covered the first floor of their new home. Greg’s shop was waist-deep, although he hadn’t yet moved in his tools.
When the water receded, the couple cleaned out the mud, ripped up the floors and kitchen cabinets and started rebuilding.
Then it stormed again. And again they rebuilt. In a few weeks, they will move out while the house is jacked up and a higher foundation poured.
They are nervous the village might abandon them, but say that for now they have no choice but to stay.
“The way the house sits now, it’s worthless,” Greg said. “We have all our money in this house. We have to do what we can to make it valuable.”
Kate Vereschagin sits on the committee studying relocation options and helped plan a “Flood Daze” community event scheduled for today.
“I know it has a future,” she said of Gays Mills. “We just have to map it out.”
Coming Monday
No one died there. Houses didn’t slide down the bluff, and there weren’t hundreds of families displaced. But the August 2007 floods did significant damage in the tiny village of Chaseburg.
One year later, the community still is waiting for some federal aid, leaving villagers to wonder: What about us? Read about Chaseburg in Monday’s Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com.
Chris Hubbuch can be reached at chris.hubbuch@lee.net or (608) 791-8217.
