Prior Flood Remedies Were Ignored

A 1982 study by the engineering firm Camp Dresser and McKee proposed a concrete floodwall to contain waters rising to 14.8 feet, which might also have spared Huntington. Again, the estimated cost was high -- $3.5 million, or about $6.3 million today. And the study appears to have sunk without a trace.

County spokeswoman Merni Fitzgerald said there is "a shared responsibility" for the inaction, pointing to voters' rejection of proposed bond issues for storm drainage in 1978 and 1990.

Nevertheless, Supervisor Gerald W. Hyland (D-Mount Vernon) said he intends to reopen the issue. "This community deserves and should demand a flood control project to keep the water out," he said last week.

For Huntington residents, who saw Cameron Run rise to blow out windows, buckle brick walls and drench basements in raw sewage, the long, sweaty slog back to normalcy continues.

Watermarks run like nasty surgical scars along backyard fences and front doors. Most of the 150 houses damaged by the flood are legally habitable but a long way from being home again. Harry Shepler, a county social worker on Fenwick Drive, estimates that only 10 to 15 of the 48 houses on the street have people living there full time.

Basements, still drying out, are empty save for the buzzing dehumidifiers. Debt, mold and mosquitoes are on everyone's list of worries. One contractor with jobs in the area estimates that those without flood insurance face paying $20,000 to $35,000 to replace appliances, water heaters, paneling and hardwood floors. Still, many consider the worst behind them.

"We're seeing a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel," said Robert Pagnella, a retired Postal Service worker whose basement, like most of those on Fenwick Drive, was flooded to the ceiling. His wife, Ella, who at first teared up when she tried to describe the lost china and other totaled family treasures from their home of 39 years, quickly brightened.

"Just talking about it makes me feel better," she said.

Almost to a person, they are full of praise for the county's response, which ranged from supplying drinking water and ice to paying for hotel rooms. At a community meeting Tuesday night, residents presented a cake to Hyland, who has been a bulldoglike presence at the Huntington Community Center, snipping red tape and nipping at the heels of county staff members he thinks are not moving quickly enough.

"The county has been very proactive," Shepler said. "The services have been outstanding."

Henny Toeti, a retired bartender and restaurant manager who lives across the street from Shepler on Fenwick Drive, said the disaster has brought the diverse neighborhood of modest 1950s-vintage duplexes together as never before.

"We see each other now! I've gained more of a family," she said, upbeat even after a bulldozer removing foul-smelling mud dislodged a light pole, which fell on wires connected to her house, yanking out part of an upstairs wall.

But also lingering are uncertainties about the future and whether residents are repairing their homes only to have them flooded again. More studies are on the way -- including a long-range plan for the Cameron Run watershed, currently in draft form, that makes recommendations for flood protection.

The Rev. Carolyn Boyd, sitting wilted and forlorn on the front steps of her Arlington Terrace home, wonders whether other, more prosperous areas of the county -- a McLean or a Reston -- would be left so vulnerable for so long.

"They wouldn't do this to other communities," she said. "There's this perception that we don't matter."