After flooding damaged dozens of Spearfish homes, including an apartment building for elderly and disabled people, recovery has continued for those most impacted.
Richard Smith is the executive director of the Red Cross Serving Central and Western South Dakota. He said they use guidelines from FEMA while assessing damages.
“Really, it’s about how high in the house did the water get, and what does that start to look like?" Smith said. "So, it’s got one classification if it’s just a couple inches deep or got into the carpet. If it soaked into the drywall or got underneath the cabinets, that’s another level. In this case there are some houses that had water over waist deep in it, and that gets classified as another level. So, we really tried to help those people that were impacted the most.”
Smith said he classifies this as a good recovery for the community.
“The American Red Cross has closed its shelter in Spearfish, we had no participants that came," Smith said. "We’ve also been assisting some people and we’ll continue to do that as people call in, have requests, or we identify special needs they may be looking for assistance with. Lastly, we’ve also been working with great community partners to meet a lot of those needs the Red Cross can’t do without, along the lines of furniture, volunteers.”
Smith said the community rallied and helped put flood victims on the path to recovery.