Politicians offer sympathy

Published 12:00 am Saturday, July 15, 2000

The biggest problem for the Becker family is not the three feet of mud that came in when the basement wall collapsed, nor that they don’t have electricity, nor that their residence is cracking and the insurance adjustor called it "cosmetic.

Saturday, July 15, 2000

The biggest problem for the Becker family is not the three feet of mud that came in when the basement wall collapsed, nor that they don’t have electricity, nor that their residence is cracking and the insurance adjustor called it "cosmetic." The problem is not knowing what to do.

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"We’re in limbo here," Jerry Becker told U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht and Mayor Bonnie Rietz as the pair toured the flood ravaged neighborhood near Marcusen Ballpark on Friday morning. "We don’t know if we need to get a contractor in here or just get our parents out for good."

Becker and his brother Bob both grew up in the house at 306 Eighth Ave. SE and now live in Hayfield and Rochester respectively. They came to the rescue of their parents, Art and Ethel Becker, on Monday and they were still here on Friday. Jerry estimated there was about $65,000 in damages to the home, which has been flooded three times before.

"This was by far the worst," Bob Becker said.

The question on the Becker brothers’ minds and the minds of other flood victims in Austin is whether or not the homes will be eligible for a flood buyout program or whether they should make the necessary repairs. With their parents both in their 80s, the Becker boys would rather see the home bought by the authorities than work to make it livable again.

It was a question the U.S. representative from Rochester and the mayor heard again and again in their travels around town.

"To me it doesn’t make a lot of sense to rebuild these houses," Gutknecht said after listening to the Beckers and the neighbor’s son, Brian Mittag, who was hauling things out of his mother’s basement.

While the politicians offered support and sympathy, Austin Housing and Redevelopment Authority director Kermit Mahan and assistant director Tom Smith offer hard advice:

"Do the repair work and hope for the best."

The soonest either HRA representative expects to know whether or not Austin will get more funding for further flood buyouts is four to six months. Since 1978 the HRA has removed more than 130 homes in the city and county from the floodplain, 95 of those since 1993. However, the funding was used up on a final few homes only a couple months ago.

While the Austin HRA got $3 million from the U.S. government after the 1993 flooding, Mahan isn’t banking on a similar amount this time. Last time, he explained, hundreds of thousands of people in the Midwest were affected, this time there aren’t nearly as many.

"We’ll do the best that we can," Mahan said, "but the buyout program is a long term solution and we won’t get a quick answer. Gutknecht can make these promises, we can’t. We’re gathering the raw data now, and we’ll be making our application, but it will be several months before we know."

In the meantime, Smith and Mahan advise, people should make their homes livable and work with the more immediately available resources. They advised contacting insurance agents as well as FEMA at the advertised 800-number (1-800-462-9029, TTY 1-800-462-7585) for disaster assistance. Smith added that the FEMA Website, www.FEMA.gov was a good source of information about the governmental programs that are more immediately available.

Smith – who has been the primary person working on the buyout program since 1993 – had been out to see the Beckers Friday, after Gutknecht and Rietz had made their tour.

"I’ll tell you what I told them," he said. "It will be a matter of months before we know if we can buy their parents home. If they don’t make the repairs now, it will mean a reduction in the buyout price. If they go ahead and get the repairs done, then the final cost will be higher and their parents will have a decent place to live."

Mahan explained that the process of deciding which houses go and which ones stay is a complicated one, based on a formula to do with the amount of money the property has needed from FEMA, the number of times the property has been flooded, etc., rather than his or Smith’s individual discretion.

"People should press forward and let FEMA be the clearing house for whatever programs they qualify for," Mahan said. "In the meantime, we’ll be working toward getting funding for more buyouts. A lot more Congressmen and their constituents were affected by the flooding in 1993. It’s not that I doubt Mr. Gutknecht, it’s just that a lot more votes were on the line then for a lot more people in 1993."

Concerns about prevention were also a repeated theme in the tour of Austin on Saturday.

"The water came up so much faster than before," Charles Volkert, who lives catty-corner from the Beckers, said. His basement flooded to within a couple inches of the first floor. "That’s why we need the Corps in here to talk about what’s happening and some kind of solution. Let’s be serious, it didn’t just start raining in the new millennium."

Both Rietz and Gutknecht agreed that some sort of flood prevention program should be a priority once the cleanup process was finished.

"We can do a lot just buying up some land," Gutknecht said. "And retaining ponds aren’t that expensive. As soon as we can we need to set up a meeting – let’s get this cleaned up first."