Like everyone who lives along Ohio 52 in Neville, Pauline Benjamin was homeless after the March flood.
But the worst was yet to come.
Five months later, she and her husband are still homeless. To say Mrs. Benjamin is frustrated with governmental bureaucracy would be a colossal understatement.
"I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown because of the mental stress," Mrs. Benjamin, 63, said Friday from her daughter's porch, where she and her husband have been living.
The Benjamins are caught in a loop:
- Because a fuel tank leaked in the Benjamins' basement, the elderly couple could not return to their home of 33 years.
- Because their house lies in a 100-year flood plain the federal government is trying to buy out, the Benjamins cannot sell their home.
- Because they still own the house, they were denied a temporary camper, as well as a low-interest-rate loan to buy another house.
The Benjamins turned to Linda Bauer, community resource coordinator for Clermont County Families and Children First for help navigating the process. Mrs. Bauer, along with other volunteers and social service workers, are trying to help flood victims and victims of a July 2 tornado in Felicity resolve "unmet needs."
One of those victims, Greg Seibert, 47, whose two-story Victorian home was left in ruins by the tornado, said it's hard to know where to begin asking for help.
"Unmet needs?" he asked Friday. "It's hard to organize chaos. It's gotten to the point where you don't really know what you need. Time, maybe? Help lifting stuff? Carpentry help? The last month has been pure hell."
Mrs. Bauer and other members of SWONKY (Southwestern Ohio - Northern Kentucky) Unmet Needs and Resource Allocation Committee met Friday morning at the Washington Township fire station.
The committee:
- Gave an Elizabethtown family furniture and a washer and dryer.
- Worked out a plan to buy a New Richmond family furniture.
- Arranged to deliver an air conditioner to a Bethel senior citizen.
- Gave a grandmother from Chilo a coffee pot and a vacuum cleaner.
Despite the passage of time, families flooded out in March are still living in rented campers, lacking critical appliances and waiting for federal disaster money.
The maximum federal relief grant was for $13,100. Some families, however, filled out paperwork incorrectly or were suspicious of government help and avoided it altogether.
"They have to get into the system and then we can start to help them through the process," said Rev. Jim Dinkel, with Lutheran Disaster Relief. "Just because the water's receded doesn't mean the problems have."
Doubling relief needs in Clermont County was the tornado.
"It was a double whammy out here," said Mrs. Bauer. "We still have a need for people to clean debris. We still have acres and acres of downed trees."
Tornado victims can apply for federal help through the Small Business Administration, but are not eligible for disaster relief money because the tornado did not qualify as a federal disaster. The Seiberts of Felicity have innumerable needs.
In addition to their two-story Victorian home, they lost their barn, silo, 75 hogs, five cars and four tractors. Homeowners insurance covered the big stuff, but not the labor involved in cleaning their yard, which is littered with branches, aluminum parts, and pieces of wood. Nor will it cover the loss of the trophies the four Seibert children won through the years.
Mrs. Bauer, whose own Moscow home is uninhabitable because of the flood, understands.
"We have been working on people's problems and working on people's problems since the first day of the flood and it hasn't let up since."
