Having fought flooding for years, Father's Day Flood brings sad end to Fairmont church
FAIRMONT — Pastor Lonnie Leo Riley is always grateful, but on Father's Day, his gratitude became difficult to describe.
The building that housed Riley's church, Agape Life Ministries, at 410 Morgantown Ave., is now condemned in the aftermath of the severe flooding from June 15.
'Actually, when church was over, about noon, I looked out and the sun was shining, and we all got out of there,' said Riley, who along with his wife Regina, are ministers of the church. 'My wife and I had to do a counseling session, so we stayed over, talking with some individuals, and by the time we got out of there, close to two it started raining,' Riley said.
After the counseling session, Riley looked at his wife and said, 'Oh man, it's coming down,' so they left the church and went home.
'When I got home, my house was flooded as well, so I got home and dealt with that as much as possible,' he continued.
Riley said he returned to the church at 6 or 7 p.m. and found damage that was unprecedented. He said water came up to his waist.
'By time I got back over to church...the whole floor of the basement had been washed out,' Riley said. 'Completely washed out. Church was wide open, so the basement door blew off, blew off the hinges. Those church doors open out for safety purposes. It washed it back inside the church about 20 feet.'
During the past year, Riley has worked with Fairmont city officials sort of nudging them on from the sidelines as they planned and approved a $17.4 million stormwater project along Morgantown Avenue. However, that project can't happen soon enough for Riley.
'When I got there, it was so much devastation,' Riley said. 'And I went down and looked, I thought, 'OK, somebody left the door open.' Mentally, you're not focusing and I looked up and the door was gone, literally gone. So much debris in the basement, I couldn't even see the door. I couldn't find a door.'
He said if church services had ran two hours longer on Sunday, lives would have been in peril as the church holds children's programming in the basement while adults are in worship.
Riley said 'some years ago' a sinkhole developed under the church which was already home to the City of Fairmont's water lines under the structure.
'And so the building — it collapsed on the inside of the basement,' Riley said. 'My refrigerator, my kitchen area, was in the basement. We came in and the refrigerator was down inside the sinkhole.'
He said the church is in the process of looking for a new place to worship. One June 22, Riley and Agape Life Ministries members will worship in the auditorium at East Fairmont High.
In terms of financial loss, Riley said he had no way to provide an estimate of how much was lost in the flooding.
In a prepared statement, City Manager Travis Blosser said city staff have 'kept frequent contact with Pastor Riley' and the issues at the church 'are one of the main reasons' the city applied for the $17.4 million grant from the W.Va. Department of Environmental Protection for the stormwater system upgrade.
'The carnage that the flooding brought to Agape and the other structures and businesses along that stretch of Morgantown Avenue shows exactly why this project is so necessary to complete as soon as possible,' Blosser continued. 'It also shows the damage wasn't just an isolated incident on Locust Avenue, but stretched across Fairmont.'
Blosser encourages residents whose homes and property were flooded to fill out a Disaster Impact Survey.
'The numbers collected through this survey allow us to better pursue relief funding for our community to help those impacted by this crisis,' Blosser said.
The survey is online at emd.wv.gov/disastersurvey. Blosser said residents are encouraged to fill out the survey regardless of the amount of damage they incurred. Residents who are unable to access the digital survey can call the Marion County Department of Homeland Security at 304-366-0196 for assistance in logging their damage.
On the state level, Gov. Patrick Morrisey said Friday that he has 'asked President Donald Trump for a Major Disaster Declaration and an Emergency Declaration' for Marion and Ohio counties. 'These declarations will help unlock federal resources to support our fellow West Virginians hardest hit by the major flooding events earlier this week.'
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