I didn’t have a problem after all

I was going to explain my Three Stooges-like experience with a plumbing problem in my house I thought I could fix.

But after we asked last week for people with a Union County connection who lived through the derecho a year ago for the year anniversary story, my plumbing problem wasn’t a problem at all.

I talked to Ann (Mitchell) Finneman who has lived in Cedar Rapids since 1994. Her dad is David Mitchell from Orient. His sister Mary Caroline Inlow lives in Orient. Anne’s first cousin is Janis (Inlow) Seddon and her family lives in Creston. She was the one who connected the CNA to Ann. Unfortunately, we talked after our story ran Wednesday about the storm anniversary.

“People are still waiting,” Ann said about repairs made to their homes. She and husband Jim are also waiting, a year after the storm.

“We have to replace all the windows,” she said about her northeast Cedar Rapids home. “The cap came off the fireplace and water came down the fireplace. It seeped under the hardwood floors we had finished three weeks before the storm. The floor started buckling and water came down through the wall and came up through the floor,” she explained.

The fear Jim and Ann have is when the damaged windows are removed from the house mold will be found since the storm was so strong it forced water to go within the walls through windows, doors and other openings typically found in house walls.

I was worried may low-flow toilet didn’t have enough water to do the job as I struggled removing a plug. I was worried about having to remove a $6 do-it-yourself toilet auger I jammed in there thinking I could fix it. Hearing Ann tell her stories, I felt humbled thinking I had problems. I try not to improve my own esteem and burdens by comparing it to others’ situations. But it’s hard not to act that way.

The timing of the derecho complicated things. The pandemic had already interrupted the economy and building supplies were becoming harder to get and the prices were going up fast. Apparently it’s common for insurance claims to have a year for completion.

But there have been so many people with claims, some people had to wait for their turn. By the time it was their turn, the price of material was far more than what the initial insurance adjuster claim. Some insurance companies were not going to budge and pay for the higher price of material. And that was just for the people whose house is still able to be used.

“When the power was restored, there were people who asked where they could live,” Ann said, noting how some people’s damage to their home was so great, the home was deemed unfit to use.

And I had a 3-foot, coiled metal item jammed in a toilet. It’s not the only toilet I have in my house. This is the only home for those people.

“There are people still today displaced,” Ann said. She paused for a moment. “A year later. We don’t have a new roof, windows, siding. We don’t have anything.”

Ann, Jim and their two kids are living like camping in their own home, she said. The floor was removed because of the damage and the subfloor was covered with sheets of plywood until the new floor can be installed.

“I put down a runner to prevent getting splinters,” Ann said about how she and her family have adjusted to their living conditions. “I feel like we are homesteaders.”

The city of Cedar Rapids made its last run through the streets in July picking up tree and other storm-related debris.

And it’s crazy what the people of Cedar Rapids experienced on the anniversary day. The area again had another storm with some energy, but nothing like what happened last year.

“I know of a family that got a new roof on the anniversary,” Ann said. “But that (anniversary day) storm, lightning hit the house and caused damage.”

Ann said she knows people who suffer from PTSD and wonders if the derecho created the same diagnosis to more people who were victims.

“I’m not that way. It’s a storm. What can you do?” she rhetorically asked. “But how many people put on Facebook a storm on the one-year anniversary? It does make you stop and take a minute. It’s just things that are ruined. But it does make you think.”

I thought I didn’t have a problem at all at my house.