Recovery Slow for Hardest-Hit Neighborhoods

By WYDaily Staff Thursday, September 01, 2011

Mary Eustace was sitting in her family room moments before a tree crushed the roof and destroyed the family's generator.

The signs of normalcy are returning to the Historic Triangle after days spent navigating blocked roads, living without power and driving from location to location in search of Internet access. Major thoroughfares were clear Wednesday, and traffic had picked up as more employees returned to work and residents ventured out to see if the grocery store’s shelves had filled.

But a drive past any of the primary roads revealed recovery is still slow and plodding for some of the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Irene. Access to Centerville Road was still blocked Wednesday morning from both Longhill Road and News Road in James City County, where crews were working to clear debris. Many of the residents along those routes were still without power, including the residents of Springhill, where a black power line lay on the ground across the entrance to the neighborhood.

Springhill residents Mary and Joe Eustace sat on their porch Wednesday morning, reviewing their insurance paperwork while a State Farm claims adjuster with Kansas license plates explored the damage to their home. Joe, who suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), was receiving oxygen through a plastic tube attached to a tank that rested beside his lawn chair.

With no electricity at home, Joe would be in serious danger if he hadn’t called in a delivery of oxygen from Apria Healthcare. The Eustaces considered themselves well-prepared for Irene; the native New Yorkers survived Hurricane Gloria’s onslaught in 1985 and were living in Springhill when Isabel devastated Williamsburg. After living without power for nine-and-a-half days in 2003, they had a generator installed, and felt confident it would keep them safe and healthy.

“We had a false sense of security,” Mary said Wednesday.

When the power went out Saturday, the generator kicked on and they carried on like normal. Just before 10 p.m., Mary got up from the couch in her family room, where she was watching T.V., and went into the den. Ten minutes later, a tree keeled over, crashing through the vaulted ceiling and dropping ceiling material, insulation and rain on the spot where Mary had been sitting moments earlier.

Upstairs, Joe thought the natural gas-powered generator had exploded. Everything went black. The Eustaces couldn’t see the damage at first, but with the aid of a flashlight, they saw the ceiling fan was hanging by a wire, almost touching the carpet.

Within minutes, neighbors were at their door with tarps and duct tape. They patched the roof, and returned with nails and a hammer when the wind’s howls intensified. Looking at the tree stump that remains in the back yard, Mary said she hadn’t quite processed the experience. “It looks like a disaster area. As the hours go by, it starts to hit you,” she said. “I haven’t cried yet … I will soon. My daughter did as soon as we told her.” Her daughter lives in Toano, where she was without power and water because she relies on well water.

For now, they’re staying in a Fairfield Inn & Suites, placing calls to Dominion Power, hoping to hear a person on the other end of the line. “We told Dominion he had health needs, and we were on the list to be one of the first" to get power back, but we called and we couldn’t get through, Mary said. Their generator was bought through Dominion.

Downed trees and foliage littered the ground in every neighborhood. In some streets, they still couldn’t be moved on Wednesday because they were entangled with power lines like necklaces in a jewelry box.

That was the scene on The Maine in First Colony, where resident Carmen Snyder was trying to pack to move out of the home she only recently sold. Dominion workers had come by Wednesday morning to snip the power lines that blocked her driveway, finally allowing her to resume her efforts to move out. A Dominion worker told her she’d have power in “about a week.”

She had spent the storm at her daughter’s Kings Green home in Toano. As bad as First Colony looked, Toano was worse. “It was devastation,” she said. “One front porch was crushed.”

She wasn’t sure what to expect at home, but when she pulled into the neighborhood, she found she couldn’t enter from one side and had to double back. “It was like a war zone,” she said.

Three trees fell in her yard, but missed her house. On Wednesday, she was without power, phone service or Internet service; neighbors with smart phones were keeping the Clara Byrd Baker Elementary School teacher up-to-date on the outside world.

Dominion Power estimates all of its customers will see their power restored by the end of the workday on Saturday. Residents without power are encouraged to call 1-866-DOM-HELP for an estimated time of repair. The time is based on the amount of damage at each work location.

The journey back to normalcy will take even longer for the residents of the homes declared uninhabitable in Williamsburg, James City County and York County. The city estimates the total cost of damage to be roughly $3.8 million. In James City County, the damage to private parties totaled approximately $21 million; the public damage assessment was not complete on Wednesday. York County is still working to collect data.

Desiree Parker and Amber Kennedy contributed to this story.