Economic Effects of Recent Storms Will Linger for a Long Time

On September 16, 2011, the News Item, a newspaper in central Pennsylvania, reported:

Shickshinny is a town with just one supermarket, gas station, pharmacy and bank. Right now, it has none.

The small down-valley community on the west side of the Susquehanna River has been crippled by the great flood of 2011. Of the 38 businesses in the small borough, only two survived -- a hair salon and an insurance office. No one seems to know when the other business owners could reopen -- or if they want to.

"I don't know what the outlook is," a teary-eyed Shickshinny Mayor Beverly Moore said Thursday at her flooded Canal Street home, minutes after arriving from a 10-mile trip to Nanticoke to gas up her car. "I don't know what businesses are going to stay and what ones are going to go."

This is just another example of the fallout and lingering economic impact of recent bad weather across the country.

There is a real tragedy brewing here as families who were already on the edge financially face the prospect of rebuilding their lives. As I wrote in Newsday last week,

After decades of disappearing jobs, declining wages and increasing expenses. . . people across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland, the Carolinas, Texas and elsewhere lack the savings needed to weather these unexpected economic shocks. Well before the spate of recent bad weather, or the recent recession, millions of middle- and working-class families were already under water.

According to the Demos report "From Middle to Shaky Ground," five years ago, more than three-quarters of middle-class families lacked sufficient financial assets to cover even a subset of their essential expenses for a few months if they lost their income or hit a bump in the road. If middle income families have no safety net to weather the job losses, declining home values, and rising costs of the last few years, how will they survive and recover from the real-life storms that have just devastated their lives?  The same goes for low-income families, who had extremely little to begin with.

When I was growing up in central Pennsyvlania the Bloomsburg Fair was the highlight of autumn.  School closed for several days so we could all attend. "The Fair," as anyone within a 60-mile radius calls it, is a big to-do. It's the county fair concept on steroids, plus horse racing, miles of food stands, and headliner entertainment. The first Bloomsburg Fair took place in the 1850s on a 10-acre site. Today it spans 200 acres -- about the size of 180 football fields.

Unfortunately the Bloomsburg fairgrounds are perilously close to a creek connected to the Susquehanna River.  When flooding took hold in early September, those fairgrounds were severely damaged.  As a result, for the first time in its 157-year history the fair has been canceled.

The end result is millions of dollars in lost revenue, a direct hit to the livelihood of the small businesses, individual vendors, and local merchants who rely on the event for income.

While Bloomsburg officials were canceling their annual fair, city inspectors about 20 miles away in Shamokin PA were busy condemning six flood-damaged homes located at 10, 12, 14, 16, 44 and 48 S. Rock St. Shamokin is a coal mining town whose prosperity has been declining since the 1970s.  Its median income is half that of the rest of Pennsylvania.  It is also where I grew up. 

The thing that's really bad," said James Snyder, owner of 12 S. Rock St, "is this," holding up a framed copy of a Public Utility Commission certification for commercial hauling.

Snyder recieved his certification in April to operate a coal hauling business.  His business office is located on the first floor of his home.  Flood waters filled his basement and did not stop until his first floor was also under 2 feet of water.  In the process, his office was completely destroyed.  The entire length of the house's foundation was damaged in the flooding. The price tag to repair just the foundation is $10,000. 

Snyder's house is just one residence of thousands across the country affected by the damage of Irene and Lee.  He is just one of thousands who need to recover and rebuild from ruined heating and electrical systems, appliances, oil burners, and personal effects sullied by raw sewage, leaking oil, mold, and mud.

Industry experts estimate that cleanup and rebuilding for homeowners will cost $3-$7 billion. About half of those costs will be heaped upon families who do not have flood insurance, mostly because, one industry publication says, they do not live in designated flood zones.

Snyder bought his house 12 years ago, and owned it "free and clear." With the home and a big part of the rest of his block in ruins, not to mention his base of business operations out of order, he's essentially starting over from scratch.

What Snyder's situation and the situations of thousands of others like him across the country offer us is a natural experiment, a test of the limits and ups and downs of both our social safety net and opportunity infrastructure.  Can average Americans and our government work together to rebuild and restore not only broken lives, but hope for the future?