News & Media: Helena Habitat works in Fromberg

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‘Bring muck boots’: Fromberg still needs help on way to flood recovery

Lindi O’Brien doesn’t like to cry in front of people. She keeps the mood on her eight-acre property in Fromberg upbeat with jokes. She reassures visitors that the mosquitos blossoming out of the floodwaters that plowed through her hometown won’t hurt you, they’ll just make you a few pounds lighter. When she comes across reminders of her nearly 50 years of living in Fromberg, family photos, books and keepsakes strewn about her property, there’s no tears, but there is a pause.

“It’s like I’m finding little pieces of my dad everywhere,” she said.

There’s still a house on the O’Brien property with at least an inch of water in its basement. Up on the ground floor, the skeletal frame of the home is visible. Crews have ripped away the dry wall and insulation. It was soaked a little over a week ago by the historic flood that hit the Carbon County towns dotting the waterways leading from the Beartooth and Absarokee mountains. This past Wednesday, Lindi O’Brien was focused on rebuilding a coop for her dozens of fowl, which include several chickens, geese and at least one turkey.

The O’Briens aren’t working alone. Since Saturday, people with AmeriCorps, a federal volunteer agency, have been sifting through the damage, helping to peel away soaked and rotted flooring. Others who have come to help Lindi include the kids active in FFA and a member of the Joliet Volunteer Fire Department. Those volunteers represent only a portion of those who are donating food, tools and labor in Fromberg. Some, like the AmeriCorps members, are here on assignment from government or religious organizations. Others are neighbors from next door, the next town or the next county. At least one is a 73-year-old Missouri man who drove straight to Montana when the floods made national news. 

“Squeaking like the wet hens that we are, we’ve had help. AmeriCorps, they have been unbelievable. The people who live in this valley are so intertwined though,” said Lindi O’Brien.

During a lunch and water break from the cleanup work, Winnie Berckmoes drove up with an SUV full of fans, shovels and burritos. Berckmoes said she’s been making runs back-and-forth from the schoolhouse in town, where supplies have been stockpiled, dropping off whatever her neighbors might need.

“It’s not awesome what happened, but doing this makes me happy,” she said.

Fromberg officials have estimated that 100 homes have been damaged by the flood, all within a town with a population of about 400. As of Friday morning, residents were still under a boil order for their water supply and Gov. Greg Gianforte requested individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency just a day prior. If that assistance does arrive, it won’t be for another few weeks at least.

Last week, the White House declared a major disaster following Gov. Greg Gianforte’s request that President Joe Biden expedite the process. The declaration opens up funding relief for the three Montana counties most impacted by flooding: Carbon, Park and Stillwater. The federal government will now be able to provide up to 75% of the total cost of the damage to public infrastructure like roads and bridges, according to the Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act.

The governor visited Fromberg on Tuesday. Several residents told him about their frustrations that for the past week they’ve had to rely on one another, as most of the emergency responses went to Red Lodge and Gardiner, the Gazette reported. 

Earlier on Wednesday, three people looked over an annotated map of Fromberg. Stones held down stacks of paperwork. Local resident Lynn White directed trucks loaded with the soaking innards of homes to the dump at the town park and answered questions from the handful of people who walked under the lumber shade structure off Highway 310. Within a few days after the flood, the Bridger middle school teacher unexpectedly found herself in the position of a volunteer coordinator.

When floodwaters breached the eastern part of town June 13, White said she was bagging sandbags for the next two evenings. When she joined the team going door-to-door to assess the damage to homes in Fromberg, she eventually started organizing the volunteer effort, tracking who needed what and where.

“There really hasn’t been a whole lot of guidance, so the cleanup has really just been a community effort… We’re still mucking out houses, then there’s going to be a drying out period. There’s debris that’s still scattered all over the place, but our highest priority right now is to get people back in livable conditions,” White said.

With two people from the U.S. Forest Service who came in from Red Lodge to assist, most of the morning was dedicated to determining which homes needed volunteers. Many residents were hesitant to accept any help in clearing out their homes, White said, not wanting to deprive others who might need it more. Since Saturday, she said, that hesitation has subsided now that homeowners have seen volunteers able clear out an entire basement in less than a day.

As volunteers trickled in to get their assignment, they were handed packets to document their work. Documenting volunteer hours is one way to get more compensation from the federal government. Although that compensation won’t be available immediately, it’s an investment stressed by officials to alleviate the financial burden on the county. FEMA will match the cost of documented volunteer hours spent in a disaster, whether used to clean up a road or a home, offsetting the 25% of costs that typically fall on a county government to pay.

“With this flood, we have a bunch of people mucking out basements or sandbagging, so FEMA will provide what a laborer would make at the local rate, plus the benefits,” said Jamie Porter, the finance section chief for Western Montana All Hazard Incident Management Team.

Porter said volunteers can provide their name, what they did and where they were to assist in offsetting costs. They can also document whatever vehicles or machinery they used, like trailers, tractors and pumps.

White said all of the volunteers she’s worked with have been receptive of logging their hours.

On Wednesday, the Shaws were among those getting a team of volunteers. The family of four live on Second Avenue in Fromberg, well within the path of the water surging from the Clarks Fork of the Yellowstone.

The half-dozen volunteers stepping inside the Shaws’ home pass through a wall of chilled air, with the flooded basement and network of fans at several windows turning the house into a massive swamp cooler. The chill is a relief for the skin, but a look through the rooms that once housed Rebecca, James and their two kids is an assault on the eyes.

Mud is caked to nearly every surface from the waist down, and their wooden floor is already starting to curl. The couple’s mountain of computer hardware, used both professionally and for their hobbies, is now useless scrap. The volunteers empty out a bedroom, piles of what used to be where the two Shaw boys slept were dragged onto the front lawn to either dry out in the sun or end up in a garbage heap.

Robert Leon Kennedy, a veteran of the U.S. Air Force and several natural disasters in and outside of the United States, was at his home in Branson, Missouri, when he saw national coverage of the floods in Montana. Kennedy made the 1,200-mile trip to Red Lodge last Saturday. He’s been sleeping in his vehicle ever since, and after helping to muck out homes in Red Lodge, he’s on his second day of mucking out houses downriver in Fromberg on Wednesday.

“[Hurricane] Dorian was the worst ever down in the Bahamas, because the whole island was destroyed by that cat-five hurricane,” Kennedy said, wiping sweat from his tanned head while taking a water break. “We’d go muck out houses like this and they’d be full of sea water and sewage. You’d work for 15 minutes and go outside and try to not hurl… Disasters basically all run together, though. You’re with people seeing their whole world destroyed.”

As of Friday morning, roughly a dozen homes still needed to be cleared of debris, White said. Although other volunteer groups have reached Fromberg in the past week, she said resources are still needed in the form of labor.

Those interested in volunteering in Carbon County can contact the Red Lodge Area Community Foundation at 406-446-2820. Potential volunteers can also find coordinators in Fromberg under the volunteer tent off Highway 310 for an assignment.

“Bring muck boots,” White said.