Nearly a month ago residents in communities throughout the Northland suffered through severe summer storms and flooding. Brimson Residents are still recovering from significant damage to their homes. They are still picking up the pieces hoping for financial help from FEMA.

Many Brimson residents, like Dave Anderson didn’t have flooding insurance. Now they are seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Anderson spent more than four decades on his property. But he never witnessed anything like the flooding at his property this year.

“It had rained like hell the night before, and I knew the water was going to come up. I’ve been through this before, I’ve never seen it come up that fast. So running out of the cabin, I started throwing stuff in the four-wheeler and got that out of here. Started getting stuff to high ground,” Anderson said. “I’m a musician, and all my instruments are in the garage. I started pulling them out of there and amplifiers. Next thing I know, the garage has got ankle-deep water. I was scrambling to get out of there.”

Anderson said he only had enough time to grab his treasured gun collection and some of his guitars. He’s grateful that his neighbors helped him that the morning of the flood. But, unfortunately, Anderson says the house isn’t salvageable doesn’t have plans to rebuild.

“The neighbors showed up, and they saved me because I was befuddled. I couldn’t believe that the water was going to come up that high, but it was coming up so fast,” Anderson said. “I was walking around just couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening, but they did. They said, ‘Dave, you want to save any of this? Get out of the way.’ They just pushed me aside and brought it all out. If they wouldn’t have done that, I wouldn’t have anything else to start with.”

Several Brimson residents are hoping they can get some assistance from FEMA, but it could be a long wait. St. Louis County’s Emergency Management Coordinator, Josh Brinkman, says this year’s flooding is an example of how hard it is for the county or state to mitigate damage to homes and businesses.

However, Brinkman says the County is coming up with a plan to implement in the future. He hopes the County can help smaller northland communities from flooding damages.

“A lot of times though, mitigation dollars, every dollar spent is $6 saved. So it is a worthwhile venture. We are having discussions with some of the municipalities that experienced flooding to look at what kind of mitigation programs we can put in place to really prevent this from happening again. At least to this scale.”

While future prevention and mitigation is a good goal, that won’t help people like Dave Anderson, who are dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages. Brinkman says residents can apply for funds from FMA to recoup some of the losses.

“I know it’s tough, but the thing that I’m really asking people for is just to be patient. We are hoping that this FEMA and SBA, individual assistance declaration, hopefully we’ll get news maybe within the next month is kind of what we’re hoping for. And if those opportunities for individual assistance do open up, we will be sending out a lot of messages.”

For more information about the GoFundMe supporting Anderson you can read more here. Also for other stories about flooding you can read more here.