How about it "Smith"? I got a million more where these came from...

http://www.lafayettejc.com/news20030...58071643.shtml

After hasty exit, family begins slow recovery


By Marc B. Geller, Journal and Courier


DELPHI -- Jackie Anderson holds her breath as she pours chlorine bleach into the foul-smelling, overturned refrigerator inside her
flood-damaged home.

The warm food compartment contains a fetid mixture of what appears to be stagnant creek water, melted ice and spoiled food.

"This smell just gets to me," she says. "That is nasty."

Anderson, 39, her husband Daniel, 38, and their four children -- Brittany Garrison, 18, Daniel Jr., 11, and identical twins Chelsea
and Kelsey, 9 -- had lived at the two-story house at 302 Cook St. for almost a year when Deer Creek flooded on July 5 and sent four
feet of water into the home's first-floor.

Evicted by Mother Nature, the family spent the past week living out of a Lafayette hotel room paid for by American Red Cross.

Jackie Anderson's parents, Ron and Maria Garrison, and her brother, David Garrison, also were forced to evacuate. Their neighboring
houses were among an estimated 1,300 Indiana homes destroyed or damaged by floodwaters in 17 counties since July 5.

The Andersons' story provides a glimpse into the heartaches and headaches a few feet of water in the wrong place at the wrong time
can cause.

Fateful Fourth

"On the Fourth of July we went out on the river, just having a good time," Anderson said. Some friends invited them to go camping
with them, but she decided against it.

"I thought, 'Nah, it's the Fourth of July. I'm going to stick around the home with my kids and celebrate the Fourth with them.'"

Staying home turned out to be a good decision, she said.

"We found out the next day that they got flooded out, they lost their boat. And I was like, 'Oh my god, an angel was on my
shoulder.'"

Hours later, however, they were getting evacuated from their home.

They were at a cookout at the house of Jackie's sister on July 5 and were listening to a police scanner when they began hearing
chatter about an evacuation.

Anderson, a part-time city parks department employee, called the Delphi Police Department and was told officers would go door to
door in her neighborhood if they needed to warn residents to leave their homes. She called her brother at 318 Cook St. and told him
to alert them if an evacuation order was issued.

"Well, no longer than five minutes after I hung up with him, he called and said, 'We've got to go. We've got a half hour.' "

Anderson and her husband left their children with her sister and raced back to the house to save whatever they could.

"And we only had actually maybe about 10 to 15 minutes, and they came back knocking on the door, saying, 'Out now. Go,' " Jackie
said.

"I got a pair of shorts and a shirt and some clothes for the kids, and that was it," Daniel Anderson said.

They were doubtful the creek would breach the levee. But then the seemingly impossible happened.

"We just couldn't believe it," Daniel said. "Later that night we come up and stood on the hill as the water was starting getting up
onto the steps and then higher and higher. And the next thing we know, it was about the middle of the door."

"I was a nervous wreck," Jackie said, "watching the water just keep rising and rising."

Daniel wanted to use his boat to retrieve some more items from the house, but authorities wouldn't let him.

"You see the water going up that high, and you know what kind of mess you're going to have and what kind of valuables is going to be
lost," Daniel said. "We're just fortunate that we had a second floor, or we would have lost a lot more."

Still, some items that were destroyed are irreplaceable. In addition to family heirlooms, home videos also were destroyed, including
prenatal ultrasounds and childbirths.

"You don't realize how important stuff is until you lose it," Daniel said.

But it's not only the loss of property that bothers Jackie. It's also the thought of how much work they put into their home.

"We've done some major remodeling and painting, just got everything fixed up the way I wanted it," she said. "I've been down in the
dumps. I don't know what we're going to do."

That first Saturday night the family stayed at a relative's house. The following day they sought assistance from American Red Cross,
which offered food vouchers and put them up at Microtel Inn & Suites through Monday night.

Neighbors still

Even after the flood, Jackie Anderson and David Garrison remain neighbors, living in rooms 325 and 326, respectively, at Microtel
Inn & Suites. Anderson's parents are staying with her grandmother on the north side of Delphi.

This Tuesday, Jackie said, the family plans to stay at her grandmother's house. They had thought about trying to rent a temporary
home with her brother and parents but decided it would be too costly. Instead, she's hopeful she and Daniel will be able to make the
downstairs of their home sufficiently tolerable over the next couple weeks to be able to move back into the upstairs.

In the meantime, the situation is hard on the entire family.

"I don't know what we're going to do," Daniel said. "We don't have any money in savings or nothing to buy a washer and dryer and
refrigerator."

Daniel lost his job at Canam Steel Corp. earlier this year when the company shut down, and Jackie is working only part time as a
parks caretaker for the city of Delphi. The family has no renter's or health insurance.

Jackie said she takes home less than $200 every two weeks from her job. The last two months Daniel has been receiving $300 a week in
unemployment benefits. The rent for their home is $500 a month, which they pay in weekly installments, the couple said.

"We were doing fine," Jackie said. "We weren't really hurting. We managed."

But now it's a different story.

"We're not going to have the money to replace everything," Daniel said. "If it's got to come out of our pocket, we'll have to go
without. We just don't have the money to pay for everything."

More important than replacing items lost in the flood is getting a job with benefits, he said.

"The insurance is the most important thing, I think. But it don't look too good, the way the economy is going."

'A lot of stress'

Both he and Jackie have gotten the free tetanus shots recommended by health officials, although they're foregoing hepatitis shots,
which Daniel said are too expensive and not as necessary.

Brittany, their oldest child, just graduated from high school.

"I'm just glad I got in there that first day when they let us in there and I grabbed her senior portrait," Jackie said. "This was a
10-by-13 in an oak frame -- paid about $300 for that picture -- and that was the first thing I went in there and grabbed, and I was
happy."

Brittany had been planning on attending Ivy Tech State College in August.

"But now with all this, she's got a lot of stress and she doesn't know what to do, if she has to put it off and wait and start
spring semester or what," Jackie said.

"She's not for sure yet. Everything's up in the air with her. But she doesn't even want to come back home. She don't want to see the
mess."

The younger children are more curious.

"They're wanting to come down here awful bad, my twins especially, and I told them no," Jackie said, explaining she's worried about
the effect it would have on Chelsea.

"If she steps one foot in that house with that mold, I guarantee you she'll have an infection."

"All this mold, we can't bring our daughter into this stuff," Daniel agrees. "That's what I'm scared about."

Jackie said she and Daniel, anyway, have been trying to shield the children from what has happened, although they brought them to
the neighborhood to show them the area.

"They were very inquisitive," she said. "They wanted to know, 'Mommy, what's going to happen? Where are we going to go? Do we have
to move?' And my son, he don't care. As long he's got his Playstation and his GameBoy, he's fine."

Tuesday was the first day Daniel and Jackie were allowed to return to their house. Reaching the home by boat, they retrieved
Chelsea's asthma medication and other items.

"I was going through water upper-torso high," Jackie said.

"The first day we come down here, you could smell gas real bad and see oil and everything floating in the water," Daniel said. "But
you're going to have that with everybody's gas cans floating around in garages and lawnmowers floating around."

On Friday, the couple braved the stench and returned again to their home to continue the cleanup effort.

"We spent most of the day tearing up carpets," Jackie said, "just throwing everything away that I don't even want to even waste my
time washing, because that smell is still in the clothes after you wash them, and I'm just throwing all those clothes out. But we've
still got a long road ahead of us, so we're going to start tearing walls out tomorrow, getting those done and getting that
insulation out."

"You know what?" she said. "Every time I come down here, it's like I feel tired just looking at the area. I do. I haven't had a
smile on my face."

It seems like the more they try to get ahead, the more they fall behind, Daniel said.

"We're going in reverse instead of forward."

Pulling together

Jackie and Daniel have mixed feelings about moving back into the home. Daniel is hopeful their landlord, who did not have flood
insurance, will sell the house to them for a rock-bottom price if Daniel can use part of an inheritance from his father that he's
not supposed to receive until he turns 50 years old.

"We like it down here, because our kids, they're right next to their grandmother," Daniel said. "I'm more than willing to move back
in."

"Not me," Jackie said. "I want to move, because I don't want to put up with this ever again."

After thinking it over, however, she says she would stay if the levee were sufficiently reinforced to prevent such a flood from
happening again.

And through shared adversity, they have gotten to know many of their neighbors.

"It's kind of nice to finally meet all of the neighbors and to know how everybody is, that they're willing to pull together and help
each other out," he said.

Want to help?

..To make a financial donation to the flood relief effort, contact the Tippecanoe County Chapter of the American Red Cross at (765)
742-6975 or send a check made out to American Red Cross disaster relief to 111 S. Seventh St., Lafayette, IN 47901; or call (765)
742-6975.

Donations also will be accepted at Fifth Third, Union Planters and Sand Ridge bank locations.

..Flood victims can seek assistance by contacting the Tippecanoe County Chapter of the American Red Cross. Or call Terry Davidson of
Davidson Funeral Home in Delphi, at (765) 564-2211, or Gil Smith, director of the Carroll County Office of Family and Children, at
(765) 564-2409, ext. 217.