Volunteers looking to help with flood mold

A member of a volunteer organization is on the Hi-Line this week, looking at damage from this year’s flooding to see if that organization can help.

Dan Stewart of the Southern Baptist Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters was looking at mold in Havre Wednesday and today and moving on to look at the damage in Fort Belknap Indian Reservation Friday and Saturday.

“We’ll look at it and see if we can help,” Stewart said this morning.

While the number of people reporting flood damage this year was not enough to generate an individual assistance disaster declaration as did the widespread flooding in 2011, Stewart, who lives in Rexford west of Eureka, said his organization is looking at the problems and seeing if it can help.

If enough people now report the damage to their local Disaster and Emergency Services coordinator, that could justify appealing the decision to not issue an individual declaration, he said.

The disaster declaration issued by President Barack Obama this year, for 12 counties including Blaine, Chouteau and Hill and three Indian reservations including Rocky Boy’s and Fort Belknap, is only for assistance repairing damage to public structures and infrastructure.

In an individual assistance declaration, the federal government provides financial help to qualified private property owners who suffer property damage from the disaster.

Regardless of that, Stewart said his organization is looking at helping people who have black mold in their residences due to the flooding.

He said what he is seeing so far on the Hi-Line is mostly people who have no insurance or are underinsured looking for some help. Southern Baptist VOAD will prioritize the work, focusing on elderly people or families with very young children first.

He said people interested in talking to the VOAD about getting help should register their damage with the DES coordinators, which is the list he is working through right now, he said.

People who suffered damage still should fill out the forms and turn them into the DES coordinators, he added — Stewart said he thinks the damage this year may have been underreported.

The VOADs grew out of the disaster caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, he said.

So many people came to help people impacted by the disaster — and often were working without any coordination, and with people or teams with similar skills overlapping and wasting effort — that groups decided they needed to organize.

After that “madhouse,” he said, the volunteers realized, “‘You know, we really need to organize a little better.’ … We learned a lot from that.”

Stewart said that organizations such as church groups and the Red Cross, United Way and the Salvation Army, which help in times of disaster, have formed the Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters chapters. Those provide central clearinghouses where people can call and the VOAD can recruit the appropriate help.

“The VOAD is to help track everybody and put them where the need is,” he said.

He said that, once he is done assessing the local damage, and has estimates on the costs for the households, he will contact the North American Mission Board — “That’s what we answer to on the Southern Baptist side” — and request funding to help people with the damage.

The first step will be to bring in a team to tear out the affected drywall, pressure wash it and sanitize it, then allow it to dry. Then a different team will be brought in to put in the new drywall, he said.

The main focus will be to try to repair the damage for those at highest risk from the mold — the very young and the elderly — before winter, Stewart said.

“We’ll help the ones who need the most first, then work our way down,” he said.