As waterways in the Chehalis River Basin receded Saturday and Sunday, Lewis County shifted from emergency response to disaster recovery as cleanup commenced in areas once overwhelmed with flood water.
As part of its recovery effort, Lewis County will also seek a disaster declaration from President Joe Biden’s office in order to free up resources from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Those discussions will proceed in part through Washington State Emergency Management.
Preliminary estimates on structures, homes and businesses affected by the flooding were not available Monday as Lewis County was still in the early stages of setting up its damage assessment hotline and an online form for people to report damage. Information gathered through residents and business owners will determine the scale to which resources from the state and federal government will be brought down.
“All those numbers add up,” said Ross McDowell, deputy director with Lewis County Emergency Management. “You don’t have to have an engineer. We’re looking for a ballpark estimate for many of these.”
Property owners can call 360-740-2600 and leave a message to report damage. A form will be available online at www.lewiscountywa.gov at a later time. A FEMA response to damage caused by the flood is not guaranteed, McDowell said, and efforts may fall short if little damage is reported.
McDowell said the county is looking for damage sustained specifically to homes and structures. Vehicles and travel trailers do not count, he said, unless a Lewis County resident uses a trailer for their home.
McDowell said a certain number of homes must have sustained damages in order to meet the threshold set by state Emergency Management, though he didn’t immediately know what that number was. The county is looking to obtain both FEMA individual assistance funds for businesses and homes and FEMA public assistance money for the county’s response.
As recovery commences, Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler said in a Monday statement to The Chronicle that her office was working with Gov. Jay Inslee to issue a state-level disaster declaration as soon as possible.
“Since devastating floods began impacting homes, farms, businesses and cutting off vital roadways last week, my office and I have been in close communication with local and federal officials to assist. We coordinated with the Coast Guard’s search and rescue operations, U.S. Army Corps and FEMA to be ready for an array of scenarios,” the 3rd Congressional District lawmaker said in the statement.
“I’ll continue to do whatever it takes to assist residents who have had their lives upended by these floods, including making sure the federal government does its part to help,” she continued.
As of Sunday, Lewis County and the Red Cross had about 36 people staying at an emergency shelter recently relocated to the 4-H building at the Southwest Washington Fairgrounds. That’s down from 52 individuals who were seeking refuge at the height of the flood late last week.
The county is no longer taking in people at the shelter, said Lewis County Manager Erik Martin.
“It was an all-hands-on-deck approach and everybody jumped in, pitched in and helped. We will get our way through the end of the response phase, and now we’re into the recovery phase, and that’ll be a while,” Martin told county commissioners during a Monday morning meeting.
Martin said he was proud and believed the county met its goals in coordinating rescues and responses, establishing a place for people to go who were displaced and in getting people in touch with resources.
Team Rubicon, a Los Angeles-based non-governmental organization that specializes in disaster response, will be in Lewis County starting Tuesday to help residents clean up, sift through the muck, dispose of garbage and fill out damage assessments.
“I will say that Centralia, by all means — driving around and looking at it — I think the damage is very minimal. I mean, we’re very grateful it only got as high as it did because I think a lot of people … dodged a bullet. But, really, Centralia is looking really good,” Commissioner Sean Swope said.
Most roadways in Lewis County were open as of Sunday evening, though trouble spots remained and a small number of roads were still closed as of Monday morning due to water still being over the roadway, McDowell said.
Lewis County road crews on Monday were out doing damage assessment on roads damaged by the flood.
United Way of Lewis County and the City of Centralia have begun to coordinate volunteer efforts for flood response. A signup sheet can be found on United Way’s Facebook page. Lewis County is also currently coordinating a cash donations effort with United Way to assist those affected by the flood.
Lewis County Assessor Diane Dorey sent a reminder out Monday that her office actively receives destroyed property claims for the purpose of valuation assessments affecting taxes. Those forms can be found by reaching out to the assessor’s office.
“Damages that result in property tax reduction are more than drying out and making minor repairs. If you have had 4 or more inches of standing water in your residence, this typically is where an adjustment in your value will be made,” a news release from Dorey read.
“Please contact us prior to making repairs, otherwise an adjustment may not be made to your value. Those properties that have adjustments made to their values will be re-inspected in July or August of 2022 for repairs that were made on the damaged property,” she continued.
