After The Storm

King Salmon residents face long-term recovery after severe flooding

King Salmon’s streets have mostly returned to their former appearance, before the record-breaking flood in the early days of the new year, with residents gradually reentering their homes and ruined appliances no longer lining the street. While most of the physical evidence is gone, a collective anxiety still spikes among residents any time the tide rises.

“We’ve come out of what we call the muck and gut period, which is a really lovely technical term,” Humboldt Community Organizations Active in Disaster Executive Director Nick Bown-Crawford says. “And people have been airing out their homes with dehumidifiers and fans, and demo-ing floors, walls. So a lot of folks are getting estimates for bids and repairs on their properties, and stuff like that.”

The canal community experienced another King Tide at the end of January and the start of February. Bown-Crawford and Laurie Richmond, faculty lead of the county of Humboldt-Cal Poly Humboldt project called Fields Landing and King Salmon Living with Water, recall watching everyone standing outside, tension thick in the air as water once again encroached onto the street.

That tide did not rise as high as predicted, but residents are still facing monumental repairs before they can return to normal life before the historic flooding that began Jan. 3 — and prepare for future ones.

“For a lot of people, this will be a financially pretty devastating event and emotionally as well,” Richmond says. “Every time there’s a big tide, folks will think about it.”

The Aftermath of a Record-Breaking Flood

King Salmon residents Linda and James Carter are in the process of rebuilding while relocating from the place they’ve called home for 15 years. They were able to get a free 30-day stay in an Airbnb on Humboldt Hill with the help of Humboldt COAD, but Linda Carter is currently staying with a friend in Rohnert Park because the unit is not pet-friendly. Her husband, meanwhile, is commuting from Humboldt Hill to work on the house. Thanks to their flood insurance, they only have to pay a $1,000 deductible, but Linda Carter estimates they won’t be able to live in their house for another three to four months.

“Where do we start? We have to replace all our kitchen cabinets, the lower cabinets. We have to replace five appliances. We have to get the floor releveled,” she says. “Our contractor, his workers have ripped out all of our flooring, so we’re down to subfloors … it’s a long, long list of what we need to do.”

Linda Carter says the couple appreciates the support they’ve received from Humboldt COAD and the FLKS project but feels the county has not done enough. She says she also found it insulting that Humboldt County Sheriff William Honsal did not believe the situation warranted a state of emergency. The sewage backup in homes alone was enough of a health hazard that the county should have been more involved, she says.

“We pay taxes the same as the people up in Humboldt Hill or anywhere else in Eureka, and I’m pretty sure that if their sewers were backing up and flooding their houses, they would be pretty damn upset and they would consider it a health issue,” Linda Carter says. “But for us in King Salmon, because we’re a low-income area, [it’s] not considered a health issue.”

For FLKS Living with Water, a major part of the long-term stage of recovery has been building trust with the community and keeping them informed about resources and the causes of flooding and high tides.

Part of the project’s goal, according to its website, is to “identify near-term, feasible strategies to reduce current flood risk while also identifying longer term planning objectives and adaptation strategies to address future” sea-level rise.

For the last year and half, Richmond, along with student researchers and community liaisons on the project, have been connecting with residents of these low-lying bayside neighborhoods through surveys, workshops and now, helping to provide aid.

She says residents seemed pleasantly surprised at her team’s presence in the area at the initial flooding. They continue to regularly check in and provide “disaster doughnuts.”

“I feel like residents of King Salmon take it as a matter of faith that they’re left behind or not thought about,” Richmond says. “So in some ways, I don’t know even if it occurs to them to call for assistance or to ask for it.”

The number of homes that experienced severe flood damage is now placed at 42, with one to three properties being considered or confirmed for demolition. Nine people have been relocated to temporary housing through Airbnb, which has a fund for emergency housing.

Exact ranges for financial costs of the flood are still being finalized, but Bown-Crawford places total structural damage costs at well more than $700,000 and total appliance costs around $50,000. He says it would not be surprising if those estimates increase throughout the repair process.

Humboldt COAD’s fund for King Salmon currently has $3,000 in donations through its website and $5,000 from the Humboldt Area Foundation. As of press time, no federal grants have been provided and the county has not directly contributed to the recovery process.

“We’re still out there doing this on our own and with the support of our community,” Bown-Crawford said. “So I think we’re in a really good place to keep that motion going. We’re going to just need continued support from the community.”

U.S. Small Business Administration Loans

Although neither the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors nor the county Office of Emergency Services proclaimed a local disaster, outreach by Humboldt COAD resulted in the U.S. Small Business Administration declaring one on Feb. 5. That opened a window for businesses, nonprofits and residents who experienced property damage or financial losses due to storm activity or flooding in the county between Dec. 31 and Jan. 5 to apply for low-interest federal loans.

Applications for physical damage claims must be submitted before April 6, and the economic injury deadline is Nov. 3. Applicants can talk with SBA representatives at the Humboldt Grange on weekdays, apply online or by phone, and no documents are required up front. The disaster loan center at the grange will be open until March 10.

About a week after the declaration, SBA spokesperson Danielle Haywood joined Bown-Crawford to speak at the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors meeting about the agency’s program.

More than 30 disaster loan applications have been submitted under the flood and storm declaration, while at least three businesses have applied for economic injury due to loss of sales.

“Even if your business had to be closed for seven days during that storm, that’s seven days that you had no income coming in,” Haywood says. “If you didn’t have the physical damage, you have the economic damage, and you can apply to be able to cover your expenses like your rent and utilities and your payroll and not have to lay someone off so that you can pay your rent.”

Deductibles through most insurance for flood damage claims can range from $8,000 to $25,000 each, according to Bown-Crawford. Mitigation costs are also widely variable — raising a home can cost anywhere from $30,000 to more than $100,000. However, SBA loans can be applied for alongside submitted insurance claims.

“We’ll work with insurance to find out what’s getting paid out and we can produce the money faster and then the insurance check comes to us,” Haywood said. “So it can be a much faster process. Sometimes insurance isn’t quick. A lot of times insurance isn’t quick.”

During the Feb. 10 meeting, Haywood highlighted that SBA loans have a 12-month grace period with no payments or interest required, and the loan amount has permanently fixed interest. Applying for mitigation costs, such as raising a foundation, can increase the loan amount by 20 percent of their physical damage costs. Physical damage can qualify even if it is not directly from flooding but occurred during the storms from that period.

“Even if you just have questions, if you’re not sure if your damage qualifies or not, come out here and ask,” Haywood said. “We’re really big about working to find the ‘yes.’ So even if someone’s initially told no, ‘OK, what can we do to overcome the reason that you didn’t make it through?’”

During the meeting, First District Supervisor Rex Bohn, who was proposing the county create a loan program for King Salmon residents, said he was not previously aware of SBA’s loan options and the wide range of damage that qualifies.

He also expressed concerns about the limitations of long-term support for the community.

“At the end of the day, there’s only a few things that are going to help King Salmon,” Bohn said. “That’s build a dike around the whole thing — which we can’t do. Pay to raise everybody’s houses, or, in the long run, if this comes to fruition and everything else, buy [out] everybody and let them relocate. But nobody wants to do that, nor would I propose that.”

Future Plans for Recovery and Mitigation

With the county recently experiencing several disasters that require long-term recovery, Bown-Crawford says he hopes a more defined plan will be laid out for local organizations on the front lines — and how the county can support them outside of financial means.

“I think we just don’t have the systems developed for recovery,” Bown-Crawford says. “Following the Rio Dell earthquake in 2022, that was the first time that the county started venturing out to create a recovery annex to the county’s plan for emergencies, so the conversation of recovery is still very new regionally.”

In the case of King Salmon, Bown-Crawford says he has been deliberating about ways to “hyper-localize” information streams for residents, and how to best cater outreach and support to what they need. Richmond also notes limited internet and cell service can be a barrier to getting the word out.

Bown-Crawford and Richmond are both working on plans for food distributions through the nearby Humboldt Grange in collaboration with Food for People, or creating a mobile pantry for the area. At the end of March, the grange will host a spaghetti dinner with presentations from representatives of the National Weather Service and FLKS Living with Water. The project will also be presenting a complete vulnerability assessment at a community workshop in April.

Richmond says she hopes to see a stronger relationship between King Salmon and local agencies emerge through the long road ahead, but has already seen residents growing closer as a whole. The current goal for FLKS Living with Water and Humboldt COAD is to create a recovery and prevention plan that residents have a say in, allowing it to best serve their unique community.

“I also have been really moved by the resilience of folks and seeing community being built through this in King Salmon, of folks helping out, lending tools to each other,” Richmond says. “A little bit of a wall is coming down, and so that’s been really beautiful to see, and new avenues of connection being built with different agencies.”

Griffin Mancuso is a freelance journalist based in Eureka. More of his work can be found at griffinmancuso.wordpress.com.

This article appears in King Salmon Recovery, Egg-citing Condor News + Black Heritage Ball.