News
Pomeroy residents are coming to grips with devastating flood damage and the work ahead
By: David Forster
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POMEROY, Ohio (WOUB) — Jackie Zirkle is standing in her bedroom. Two days ago the room and the rest of her house were flooded with 2 feet of water.
The waterline is still visible on the walls.
There’s mud on the floors. The air is thick and musty. Family members with mops, shop vacs and plastic trash bags move through the home.
Jackie and her husband, Bruce, have lived in this house in Pomeroy for 50 years. The creek behind them has overflowed before. But nothing close to this.
When the heavy rains came around midnight Sunday, the creek became a wall of water. It flattened their chain-link fence as it surged toward their home and others in the neighborhood.
As the water rose inside, Jackie and Bruce slogged through the rooms moving valuables to higher places.
“Then it got to the point that they came and knocked on the door, and they said it’s a mandatory evacuation,” she said. “I said we’ve got an upstairs, we can go upstairs. Oh no, it’s mandatory evacuation.”
When Jackie stepped down through a side door, the water outside was waist high. She clung tightly to the arm of the police officer helping her wade to safety.
She and Bruce were taken to a granddaughter’s house nearby to wait out the storm. Four hours later they were back home.
“We couldn’t rest or sleep,” she said. “We was just antsy and wanted to see what had happened and what needed to be done.”
They rented a U-Haul truck to take what could be salvaged to storage. Much more is going to the dump. Their cars were also destroyed.
When it comes to rebuilding, the couple are going to have to foot the bill themselves.
Jackie and her husband are in their 80s. She says moving isn’t really an option for them at their age.
“We’re going to do the best that we can to put it back together,” Jackie said. “It’s heartbreaking, it really is. But we’ll make it, with God’s help.”
Meanwhile, not far from the Zirkles, Larissa Morris was also trying to come to terms with flood damage and the work ahead.
Morris is office manager for Ohio Valley Animal Clinic in Pomeroy. A nearby creek overflowed in Monday’s storm and sent about 2 feet of muddy water into the clinic, soaking cabinets and equipment.
Dr. Josh Ervin, the clinic’s owner, was the first to arrive Monday morning after mudslides that temporarily closed the highway were cleared enough to allow traffic through, Morris said.
He walked through the clinic room by room recording video and sent it to her.
“It devastated me,” she said. “This is my home away from home. It means a lot to me. So it was really hard.”
Morris was not able to come in on Monday because of flooding near her home in Rutland, but when she arrived Tuesday there was still water on the floor.
“We were taking squeegees and shoving it out the door,” she said.
The damage is extensive, Morris said. “It’s in the drywall. It’s in the walls. It’ll do nothing but mold and mildew,” she said. “So I think a little bit at a time, we’re just going to kind of reconstruct everything.”
No animals were in the clinic when it flooded, Morris said, because they don’t keep them over weekends.
Morris said she hasn’t had the time yet to look into the clinic’s insurance coverage. Given that the governor has declared a state of emergency for Meigs County, she’s hopeful there may be some government assistance.
The clinic will remain closed for the rest of the week, Morris said. “Hopefully next week we’ll be back open and doing the best that we can.”