NAUGATUCK, Conn — A once-in-a-lifetime flood still finds its impact across the Naugatuck Valley. The Aug. 18 disaster left thousands without power, families without homes, and business owners wondering what would come next.
While the water has dried up four months later, some still say they are still living through a nightmare.
“The past four months have just been a complete rollercoaster,” said Emily Brisch, who lost her home in the flood, “It’s been a process, I don’t know if we’ll ever recover from this.”
Brisch and her husband raised their two daughters in their Seymour home, but all that is left in its place is an excavation site. After speaking with their mortgage company and engineers, the family found it would be cheaper to completely redo the home instead of only repairing it.
The couple says they were forced into the position, since foreclosing on the home in order to start over would cripple their credit score, in a housing market where they worried about interest rates.
However, Brisch said a saving grace had been the support the community had shown them. Friends, family, and even local businesses like the Griffin Brothers helped the two begin their journey to redo their home. But this process has still not been easy.
“Last week we had some hiccups with the SBA of having our loan funds actually made available to us,” said Brisch.
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At the moment, the couple says they took out a loan worth more than their former house to complete the project. Part of the loan was done through the Small Business Administration, however, the Seymour couple said accessing the loan has been difficult at times.
“If it wasn’t for donations that I received from my GoFundMe, I mean I wouldn’t even be rebuilding my business,” said Kathy Dibner, who lost her chicken farm in the August flood.
While Dibner has made some progress in her rebuild, it is still far from where she would like it to be. The Southbury resident says her and her neighbors' requests to FEMA were denied, which has made the process difficult. This comes after the agency it awarded more than $10 million in federal disaster assistance has been approved for over 2,454 households in Connecticut following the storm.
“I appealed it and I still haven’t from FEMA, and it’s been over 60 days,” said Dibner.
The farmer told FOX61 her neighborhood has been left in the dark as to what restoration efforts will look like, let alone a timeline of when they'll be completed.
“[DEEP] was supposed to be updating us biweekly, and the last update we have was Nov. 12, and we still don’t have answers," said Dibner, "So myself and our neighbors, we need answers of who is going to fix this and restore our properties back to the way they used to be?”
FOX61 has reached out to the Small Business Administration and the Department of Energy and Environment Protection and will update this article with their response once it is received.
Steffen Reals is a reporter and anchor at FOX61 News. He can be reached at SReals@fox61.com. Follow him on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
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