Tallies of damages may lead to recovery money

A lot of damage was caused due to the flooding this past week in New Richland. Cleanup efforts are still underway all across the city. A team is coming around town on Sunday to talk to folks to get a dollar estimate of damages and also to use this info to apply for funding at the federal level. The groups will go door to door and business to business. Hopefully, folks can get some money to help with their damages.

 

During the week the kids from the local high school spent many hours on cleanup.

 

Senator Klobuchar put out a statement this week that the time is now for putting money into infrastructure to fix this. She directed her office to work with the local city and county to find funding to do so. Hopefully the studies that were paid for in order to look for grant money to fix the infrastructure around town will now finally be put to good use. 

 

Talking with local folks, I have heard of at least one business with damages over $100,000. We do not know the amount of dollars necessary to clean up and fix the care center. More than 80 employees I was told worked in that building. 

 

The entire first floor of the apartments across from Budachs were essentially destroyed. 

Ten to 12 houses are deemed a total loss. 

 

Thousands and thousands of dollars of damages to more than 300, maybe even 400 homes in New Richland. 

 

The time is now to fix this problem as permanently as possible. 

 

I am grateful my home and place of employment were not affected directly. One or two or three floods ago my Dad’s basement flooded for the first time ever. After clearing everything out, he basically left it that way. So he was prepared. 

 

Others were not so lucky.

 

My final real thoughts on this are that I do expect lasting change to be made. I spoke with multiple county commissioners and have read so, so many news articles. It will take time. I just pray that we don’t endure so much damage in the meantime.