It’s been a year and a week since the morning Hannibal’s Bear Creek overtopped its banks and rushed through homes and businesses. The flood lasted an hour, but the property damage and personal strife have lingered, as we detailed last week.
The Unmet Needs Committee of Marion and Ralls County released its final report Wednesday on the aid it provided in the wake of that flood. You can read it below (it’s a PDF file, and it can be opened in a free PDF reader like Adobe Reader).
Unmet Needs Committee’s July 2010 Flood Report
• The committee spent a total of $40,163 on major assistance to families. The bulk of that — $30,650 — was spent on furnace repair and replacement for 14 families. Other expenses includes water heater repair and replacement (which aided the greatest number of families at 34), mobile home skirting and insulation, and home inspections.
• Hannibal’s Church of Christ, one of the Unmet Needs Committee’s partnering agencies, helped 25 families with appliances, personal care items and household cleaners.
• The need was great and dire in the Bear Creek Basin, hardest hit in the flooding. According to the Unmet Needs Committee’s figures, 80 percent of the roughly 250 families in the area fell into the low-income or poverty-level bracket, and most of them did not have flood insurance.
• No financial assistance was provided by state, federal or local governmental units. This has been a sore spot for many people affected by the flood and for those who have sought to help them. The Federal Emergency Management Agency granted assistance to public agencies, but not to private individuals who suffered losses.
The Unmet Needs Committee is a voluntary coalition of not-for-profits, human service agencies, churches and government officials that works to provide assistance “by working together and leveraging resources, both financial and human.” Its partnering agencies include the United Way of the Mark Twain Area, RSVP at Douglass Community Services, North East Community Action Corp. (NECAC), American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Church of Christ, Bethel Baptist Association and University of Missouri Extension.
