Flood victims entangled in multiple bureaucracies

PALMER — Daina Mirsch-Wenner and her husband, Chris Wenner, have been banging their heads against the walls of insurance and government bureaucracies longer than most of their Valley neighbors whose property was damaged by recent flooding.

When the waters crested on the Matanuska River in September, the Wenners had already been evacuated for months. The river had created a new channel in July, driving them out, dumping one of two residences on their property into the river, and undercutting the main house. Now, after the September flooding, the house dangles over the riverbank.

But even with that months-long head start, the Wenners still haven’t been able to reach a resolution ahead of their neighbors impacted by flooding more recently.

“We do have flood insurance and we’re still paying on that,” Mirsch-Wenner said.

In fact, they’re also paying homeowners’ insurance on an uninhabitable home, worried that with all the people who stop by to see the dangling house vandalism might occur. They’re also still paying the mortgage. Chris Wenner was able to work out a deal with their current landlord to finish out a remodeling project in exchange for three free months of rent.

“We had to pay our first month of rent last week,” Mirsch-Wenner said Saturday.

She said the insurance policy would probably pay off what’s left of the mortgage, if they can get everything sorted out. Last she heard, an engineer’s report had to be corrected. No one’s giving her any kind of dates for when she should expect to hear back.

Meanwhile, she said, her husband, Chris Wenner was first in line when the state opened a disaster assistance center in the Butte. Since then, she said, she’s received a response and it doesn’t sound promising.

“Because we evacuated our house on (July) 23 we probably wouldn’t be eligible,” she said.

She said she and her husband hope it gets wrapped up soon, and not just because they need to get back on track financially. She said doesn’t want to see another building go into the river. The last one went in, she said, because she was told if it was moved the insurance company wouldn’t pay a dime for the loss of the structure.

They worked to make sure things like appliances and fuel tanks had been removed first.

“What went downstream was pretty much the bare bones of the cottage,” she said.

She would hate to see the house suffer a similar fate, but she can’t afford to jeopardize those insurance payouts.

The family said they’ve heard criticism in the community for not preventing a cabin and septic system on their property from going into the river. Mirsch-Wenner said their hands were tied. They exhausted all of their personal resources trying to save their property, she said but in the end the fight was futile.

So what is the plan to keep the house out of the river? If everything is resolved, Mirsch-Wenner said it would likely just be demolished. Someone has offered to buy it, but she’s skeptical it could be hauled off in one piece, given that you can’t get around to the west side because there’s a river there.

Someone offered to save it in place, she said, proposing to build stilts under it for $20,000. The prospect of living on stilts above a river is not appealing, she said.

Even talking about how frustrating it’s been, Mirsch-Wenner stopped periodically to count reasons she was fortunate, ways it could have been worse.

For instance, unlike a lot of her neighbors, Mirsch-Wenner said she’s glad to have been flooded. Before the water overran its banks and entered the house, the insurance company was unlikely to pay since the problem was erosion rather than flooding.

And, looking down south down the river toward the areas of the Butte hardest hit in the flooding, she recognizes that she was at least fortunate to have been given time to evacuate.

“Those poor people, they didn’t get anything out,” she said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.