Double floods and no help from FEMA or their rich state have left these Appalachian residents feeling abandoned

Buchanan County is closer to eight other state capitals
than Richmond. (OpenStreet map by The Washington Post)

Saved by trees and one another, citizens in Buchanan County, Virginia, were hit with violent flash floods about a year apart, leaving homes and lives in rubble. Residents were denied Federal Emergency Management Agency aid, based on "a complicated formula that makes it harder for people in poor communities to qualify for help than those in wealthier ones," reports Laura Vozzella of The Washington Post. "An issue nationwide that the agency's own advisory council criticized as part of a broader study in 2020."

The denial from FEMA, and lack of help from the state, left some people with nothing, Vozzella reports: "Renter Tim Stiltner, who barely escaped the second flood in July 2022, with his wife and two sons, one of them in a wheelchair, was denied government aid even though his family lost everything." Stiltner said, "All we got out with was what we had on."

Residents feel abandoned by systems that are supposed to help all but disfavor the poor. "FEMA partly based its decision on a dollars-and-cents calculation. . . . The agency figures that states have the wherewithal to help individuals unless the total value of properties lost is enormous," Vozzella explains. "To residents of Buchanan, though, FEMA's math does not add up: Why would the feds rather bail out the owners of posh beach homes lost to hurricanes, they wonder, than poor mountain people wiped out by floods?" Sen. Travis Hackworth (R), who grew up in Buchanan and represents the area in Richmond, told Vozzella,"The person with the $3 million home probably has the resources to go somewhere and get additional lodging more than someone with a $30,000 or $50,000 home—and that's literally all they have."

Remains of homes sit after they were destroyed by flooding
in August 2021. (Photo by Justin Ide, The Washington Post)

The Commonwealth of Virginia has the money to help Buchanan County. Ranked among the nation's 10 richest states, "it happens to be awash in black ink, wrapping up the last fiscal year with revenue that exceeded estimates by $5 billion," Vozella reports. But the state is gridlocked in a budget dispute. "Whenever it's approved, that money will be for homeowners only. State funding for flood-prevention programs is wrapped up in divisive climate politics. . . . Sen. Tim Kaine (D) secured $1.5 million in the draft Senate appropriations bill for the Appalachian Service Project, a nonprofit that has been helping renters as well as homeowners rebuild in Buchanan. But the final bill has yet to pass. Unless or until that money comes through, most renters will be left to their own frayed bootstraps."

For a county with back-to-back floods, there is a thin silver lining of disaster preparedness. The county "set up a long-range rebuilding committee after the first flood and was able to quickly expand its mission to cover the second, said Butch Meredith, construction manager for the Baptist General Association of Virginia, which is coordinating repairs to homes that can be salvaged." Meredith said: "When Hurley happened, it took two months before any repairs started. When Whitewood happened, it took less than seven days."