Richwood Area Re-Building Efforts Receive Huge Boost

The historic flooding which struck West Virginia last summer dealt a severe blow to many rural communities, including Richwood and the surrounding area, but rebuilding and recovery are underway. Those efforts were given a boost this week in an event which occurred in Richwood Tuesday, February 28th. Pat Bond, chairman of the board of the .  explained more.

“Today in Richwood, the Federal Home Loan Bank had an event with Senator Capito, and the mayor of Richwood, and a lot of other folks, where we presented a $2.3 million check for flood relief, not only in Richwood, but in other devastated areas of the state of West Virginia, because of the floods that occurred in June.”

He talked about how the effort was organized, and how individuals could seek assistance.

“The Federal Home Loan Bank is a cooperative that is owned by the banks in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware. So, in those three states, we like to say that we know everyone. And, that when trouble hits in one of our states, we feel like it’s trouble for everybody.  So when we heard about the devastating floods, I’m a native West Virginian, and a resident of Charleston – I reached out to the bank and said “We need to do something.”

And in a very short period of time, we were able to put together a program that, through our member banks, we could provide funds for new housing or housing repair. We worked with United Bank, Summit Community Bank, Pendleton Community Bank, the Bank of Monroe and Mars National Bank. And they in turn worked with a number of non-profit programs, including Community Works, the Greater Greenbrier Long Term Recovery Committee, the Appalachian Service Project, Southern Appalachian Labor School and Hosanna Industries. And through those we hope to see the building, and we are seeing the building. When we were in Richwood today, we saw the foundations being poured for the first of 12 new homes that will be built in Richwood for folks whose homes were destroyed by the devastating flood.

“The $2.3 million that we have provided are in the form of grants. So these grants were made through our member banks to the organizations that I mentioned to you earlier. The best way to work through that is to reach out to one of our member banks that’s in the program, that’s already participating in that – and to give you those again, that’s United Bank, Summit Community Bank, Pendleton County Bank, and the Bank of Monroe. So if somebody has a need, we had at our meeting today, in Richwood, representatives of all these banks and all of the communities that are being served by those banks.

“One of the things that’s so important with something like this, is that, the passion we saw and the dedication that we saw of the people in Richwood. I mean, it was a community that came together to rebuild itself. So many times in things like this, you see where different factions within a community cannot come together and cannot get behind a rebuilding effort, and Richwood just did a fantastic job in doing this.”