For Mineral, Va., East Coast quake was no joke
The House was scheduled to vote Thursday night on a measure that includes billions in disaster relief funds. The people of Mineral, Virginia hope they will see some of it.
The town is the closest to the epicenter of last month's magnitude 5.8 earthquake. CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews says many of them don't have the money to rebuild.
Most people on the East Coast felt the earth shake last month. But at its epicenter in Mineral, the earthquake threw Bessie Courtney on the floor.
"You know how in the movies you're shaking and you are trying to walk? It was like that," she recalled.
The earthquake in Mineral was so violent, it moved Courtney's house a full foot from its foundation.
A mile away, Karin Sewell's house jumped three inches.
"The whole foundation tried to roll back into the woods," she said.
You might call the area around rural Mineral, Virginia America's forgotten disaster zone. No homes collapsed, but within a five-mile radius of the epicenter, more than 700 homes were snapped, cracked and buckled. Twenty-seven homes were so rocked off their foundations they were declared destroyed. The elementary school was so damaged, it's being replaced with trailers.
Dozens of homeowners, desperate to keep their homes upright, have had to brace up their crumpled basements.
Mineral, Va. - Earthquake epicenter
4.5 aftershock shakes Mineral, Va.
But the true disaster for residents like Karen Sewell is financial. The cost to repair her home exceeds $100,000. Almost no one here bought earthquake insurance.
"We have insurance," said Sewell, "but it doesn't cover earthquakes. Nobody would have ever thought an earthquake would have happened in Louisa County."
Experts from FEMA have studied the damage. The governor has applied for federal aid and a request is under review. But federal help would begin with the offer of low-interest loans that many homeowners say they can't afford.
"We couldn't do $100,000 at zero percent," said Sewell. I mean, how do you pay back $100,000?
Andrews asked Bessie Courtney what her financial options were right now? "Actually, there are no financial options right now," she said. "We got a $250,000 mortgage at this point."
FEMA could also offer grants to rebuild these homes, but the maximum grant, at $30,000 won't cover repairs this extensive. In this most unusual disaster in this most unlikely place, residents with the most damage remain on shaky ground.
