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Though it’s been 10 or 20 years since they’ve graduated from Houston High School, Houston is still home for Root Relief members, a Twin Cities-based nonprofit that began after the floods of August 2007 devastated their families and friends.
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Tasha Carney, right, along with her husband, Nick, and daughter, Nadiya, 6, looks through flood photos of their destroyed hobby farm in Houston Saturday at a benefit for flood victims hosted by Root Relief, a Minneapolis-based non-profit organization. (photo by Katie Derus/Winona Daily News) |
Roof Relief organized a benefit Saturday at the Houston Hoedown fest grounds loaded with live music, prizes and an auction including Twins tickets and vacation getaways. The group has already raised thousands of dollars for flood victims, but there’s still a long way to go, organizers say.
Nine months ago, organizer Lisa Missling remembers cramming around the TV at a campground and listening to reports of a flash flood in her hometown. She and other Houston alumni were camping up north, and desperately made phone calls home to make sure their families in the Houston area were safe.
“We were camping and thinking, ‘We can’t do anything,’” Jody Thompson recalled.
So, they decided to do something.
In September, Root Relief’s first benefit concert in St. Paul raised $37,500 and distributed the funds to the Houston County Interfaith Long-Term Recovery Organization and Rushford Area Disaster Alliance for Recovery.
On Saturday, the group’s goal was at least $20,000, Missling said.
RADAR has distributed almost $275,000 through its caseworkers.
In Rushford, Minn., alone, there are 266 active cases representing more than $7.7 million in unmet needs. The average unmet need per household is just under $30,000.
Salvation Army caseworker Liz Bickford has been assigned to work with HCILTRO and said there are 35 open cases in Houston County with about $500,000 in unmet needs.
An unmet need is strictly the amount needed to complete the structure, Bickford said, making it different from an unmet loss.
This means that agricultural losses — land, crop, feed and fence replacements — are not figured in. While some donations of fencing and hay have helped, the unmet needs of farmers remain a large mystery as the planting season gets underway.
An estimated 7,000 acres of farmland was affected, said Audrey Hegland, an administrative assistant for the city of Houston. One cattle farmer’s pasture is buried in eight feet of sand, which will cost about $240,000 to clean out.
“Those things aren’t on the radar of people,” Missling said. “These farms, this land, this is their livelihood.”
Though they’ve applied for funds through the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, Hegland doesn’t think the money will materialize for at least another year.
“If the big farmers can’t get funding, I doubt we can,” Tasha Carney said.
Nick and Tasha Carney’s 10-acre hobby farm was wiped out, losing not only their house, but animals, five acres of hay and two large outbuildings.
Some things they just won’t replace, like one building valued at $20,000. Right now, they’re reseeding the grass so that their kids have a yard to play in again.
In the meantime, Louise Stromberg, HCILTRO secretary, said the group will be looking for other relief outlets for farmers.
“We’ve been trying to find ways beyond because those parameters don’t fit,” she said. “We’re here for the long haul.”
