Roger Barnhill works on cleaning up his apartment off Rozella Street. It was flooded during flash floods spawned by Tropical Storm Earl last week. The neighborhood surrounding Rozella Street was one of the hardest hit in the area by the storm. JEFF JANOWSKI/STAFF

Victims back to see aftermath of flood

Web posted September 11, 1998

By Emily Sollie and Alisa DeMao
Staff Writers

The water's gone, but the evidence remains.

Along the edges of Rozella Street behind Regency Mall, the bottom halves of the trees and shrubs are caked with a thin brown film of dried mud. Houses still have dried debris on the sides, marking the height of the water that rose up from Rocky Creek when Tropical Storm Earl dumped 10 inches of rain on Augusta a week ago.

Mattresses, furniture and carpet are common front-yard decorations in this neighborhood, which was one of the hardest hit.

Barbara Maines used to have carpet in her apartment. Now she's got a concrete floor. The carpet and padding are piled in a soggy mass outside the front door. Her landlord brought her a new refrigerator Wednesday, she said.

A fan runs inside the Maines family's living room to keep air circulating and dry the floor, damaged by floodwaters. JEFF JANOWSKI/STAFF

The old one was destroyed when two to three feet of water invaded the bottom floor of her apartment.

``We were lucky,'' Ms. Maines said. ``We have an upstairs.''

She and her sons carried most of their belongings upstairs as the water started to seep in, she said.

``I've never been caught in a flood before. I didn't know what to do,'' she said.

The apartment adjacent to hers, which is not occupied, suffered similar damage. The carpet, which hasn't yet been stripped out, is still soaked. The wood paneling on the walls has buckled. The furniture was ruined. A faint mildew scent lingers in the air.

The flood was an inhospitable welcome to the neighborhood for Ms. Maines, who just moved into the apartment three weeks ago. She didn't know it was in a flood plain until it was too late, she said.

Her neighbors, Ann and Roy Patch, though, have lived on Rozella Street since 1951, Mrs. Patch said. Their house is slightly higher than the one Ms. Maines lives in -- they only had three inches of water inside the house. But their heating and air conditioning unit outside was submerged.

``Three inches is better than three feet. That's how much we had in 1990,'' she said, referring to the last major flood in Augusta. ``We fared OK this time. We didn't lose any clothes or bed linens or furniture.''

Most of the floors in their house are wood, she said. Only one room, the bedroom, was carpeted, and they've decided not to bother replacing it.

``We've decided we're just going to use area rugs from now on,'' she said with a laugh.

The Patches' problems are the most common flood-related losses, said Pam Tucker, director of the Richmond County Emergency Management Agency.

``The two biggest issues I'm hearing about right now are total carpet replacement and air conditioning units that have to be replaced,'' she said. ``And both of those are so expensive. A lot of people didn't have insurance. And unless you get a federal disaster declaration, there's no way to get any money for that.''

Property owners aren't the only ones dealing with aftermath from the flood. Damages for the county will reach about $80,000 -- mostly the cost to repair a complete washout on Willis Foreman Road, said Mike Green, Augusta's assistant public works director.

Officials will have to contract out the work on the road because the city doesn't have the equipment or worker expertise to install a new drainage system that's needed.

The contract could reach $60,000, Mr. Green said.

The other $20,000 is merely the cost of materials to repair damages to roadways and shoulders that were washed out or eroded and doesn't include the cost of labor for cleanup.

Richmond County work crews should finish clearing debris and downed tree limbs from the sides of roadways today, although it will take longer to clear silt and other debris out of ditches, Mr. Green said.

Crews also continue to collect material from ruined houses that area residents leave on curbs as they work their way through damaged houses and yards.