Oneida, N.Y. -- James and Norene Rinaldo had just gone out to do a little grocery shopping that morning. When they returned an hour later, emergency crews blocked them from returning home.

They watched the flood waters pour into Oneida, rush down Maple Street, envelop their van and inundate their home of 45 years. By the time the water crested last June 28, their street and neighborhood were under 6 feet of water.

Muddy water filled the basement and first floor. The walls were soaked. The floors buckled. The living room furniture was in the kitchen.

James had lived in that house since he was 16. He and his wife bought the home from his parents, and they had lived there since 1968. They raised four children there.

"I wanted to cry," said James, 78. "It took a few days to accept the fact that we weren't going to be able to rebuild and go back there."

A year later, the Rinaldos remain flood refugees. They live in a small rented home a mile from Maple Street, waiting for the state to buy their house so they can move on with their lives. Their Maple Street home sits empty. The floors are still buckled; the lower 4 feet of the walls on the first floor are ripped down to the studs.

"The damage is so bad there's no way it's going to be rebuilt," said James Rinaldo. The house is assessed at $62,000, and Rinaldo said estimates to rebuild it are double that.

The record-setting flood that hit Oneida on June 28, 2013, altered the life of an entire community. The flood damaged 214 homes in The Flats, as the low-lying, low-income neighborhood is known in Oneida. The surging water pushed a 12-by-12 foot wooden gazebo into a pool. It knocked houses from their foundations.

A year later, the scars remain. Thirty-one homes, including the Rinaldos', were damaged so badly the owners are waiting for the state to simply buy and tear them down. Of those, 19 remain vacant. Four of them stand in a row on Linden Street -- nearly an entire block vacated by the flood. Sagging orange construction fence still surrounds some homes that bear bright red signs with a white "X."

Some people walked away. One woman sold her $77,000 house for just $7,000.

'People want to stay there'



Most people in The Flats, however, have rebuilt their houses, said Helen Acker, the city councilwoman who represents the area.

"Some have improved their homes even nicer than they were before," Acker said. "People want to live there. That's their community, their friends and their loved ones. They want to stay there and they're making it work."

It hasn't been easy.

"It's a lower-income area, so finances are very difficult," Acker said. "It's tough for people to come up with the money."

The median household income in the area that includes The Flats is almost $50,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The median home price is $72,000.

The state handed out checks last summer to help people rebuild; some residents got as much as $31,900. Few people had flood insurance. Many homes are what Acker calls "generational," passed down from parents to children with no mortgages that would require insurance.

Many residents who had flood insurance didn't get enough for repairs. Jim Rafte estimated he sustained $100,000 worth of damage to the East Walnut Street home he was born in. He got $18,000 from his insurance company.

"That $18,000 didn't cover a hell of a lot," said Rafte, a Madison County supervisor.

Walter Ward, who has lived on Maple Street across from the Rinaldos' house for eight years, lost his 1977 Thunderbird parked behind his house. Ward had to clean out several inches of mud from the house after the waters receded; contractors were still working this spring to repair the foundation and remodel the first floor.

The flood was traumatic, but Ward, 40, said he's bounced back.

"I'm as good as I'm going to be," he said.

Oneida flood victim George Thayer, standing in the background, listens to a speaker during an informational forum for victims a year after the June 2013 flood.

'I'm 69 years old and I've got lung cancer'



James Rinaldo's cousin and next-door neighbor on Maple Street, George Thayer, now lives with a friend in a small apartment in Oneida Castle. He said his house, too, is knocked off the foundation and beyond repair.

Thayer fumbles with the batch of paperwork he received from the state. The chemotherapy used to treat his cancer has made his fingers numb.

Thayer recalls that at a meeting at the Kallet Civic Center last fall, he was told it could take 18 to 24 months before the state would buy his house.

"I'm not going to be around in 18 to 24 months," Thayer said. "I'm 69 years old and I've got lung cancer."

Thayer got a check last fall from the state for $31,900, the maximum allowed for repairs. He didn't cash it, he said, because doing so would require him to fix a house that can't be fixed.

Thayer let that check expire, and in February the state Housing Trust Fund Corp. mailed a second one for the same amount. The accompanying letter warned Thayer in bold letters that "no additional checks will be sent so you must be sure to cash this check" within 60 days.

"I didn't cash that one, either," he said.

Thayer and the others hoping for a buyout might have to wait another year or more, Acker said. Residents who applied once to have their homes bought out will have to apply again, she said, and Oneida must compete with other flood-damaged cities across the state for a limited pot of money.

Rebecca Sinclair, of the state Office of Storm Recovery, said residents could get their checks from the federal government by the end of the year. A state consultant who spoke at a public meeting this month in Oneida said the same thing.

Oneida flood victim Karin French reviews paperwork telling her she was not eligible for aid after her $77,000 house was severely damaged in June 2013. She finally sold the house for $7,000.

'Take it: I'm done with it'



Karin French finally got tired of waiting. Just before the flood, she had remodeled the kitchen and bathroom of the house she grew up in on Maple Street. French owned the home, but her son, his wife and their two boys lived there. After flood waters poured in above those new kitchen counters, French fought for months to get recovery money promised by the state.

On Oct. 30, she was told she wasn't eligible because she lived in Sherrill at the time of the flood. Her son and his wife weren't eligible, either, because they didn't own the house.

French was considered a landlord, even though her son didn't pay rent. She was approved for a $65,900 federal loan, but decided she didn't want the debt.

Instead, she put a For Sale sign in the front yard. The house was assessed at $77,000.

Her asking price was $20,000. She didn't get any takers and dropped the price to $10,000. Finally, with a tax bill looming and no hope of rebuilding the house, French got an offer: $7,000.

"I said, 'Take it. I'm done with it,'" she said. "It will just sit here and rot otherwise."

'We never had a problem with water'



The rain came hard and fast early the morning of June 28, pelting soil already soaked by a long, wet June. It was a freak event; the storm clouds loomed over the creek's watershed and dropped several inches of water in sheets.

As morning wore on, the creek rose swiftly, then suddenly jumped its banks and surged faster than anyone can remember. The water poured in so rapidly some buildings had to be evacuated. Water overwhelmed businesses and the city's waste water treatment plant.

The water drained slowly; city crews even deployed huge pumps to get the water out. Some residents weren't allowed to return to their homes for days. While they waited, their homes steamed in 90-degree heat; mold grew rapidly on walls, floors, furniture, carpets. Everything had to be torn out.

James and Norene Rinaldo stand in the kitchen of their Maple Street home in Oneida that was heavily damaged by the June 28, 2013, flood.

Residents were stunned by the scale of the damage.

"I've lived in that house for 62 years," James Rinaldo recalled, "and we never had a problem with water no matter how much rain we got."

Oneida has flooded many times, however. In 1922, just 13 years before Rinaldo was born, a massive flood inundated The Flats. Floods also hit in 1936, 1950 and 1959, and again in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes drenched the Northeast. During Agnes, some residents had to be evacuated by boat. Power was shut off. The wastewater treatment plant shut down.

Even the Agnes flood, though, was dwarfed by last year's. Before June 2013, the highest level ever recorded at the stream gauge near The Flats was 15.6 feet.

On June 28, Oneida Creek rose to 17.2 feet.

'You get paranoid almost...'



Like the empty, leaning houses in The Flats, psychological scars remain. Every time the clouds open, residents say, they're on edge.

"I'll tell you that when it rained all day yesterday, you get paranoid almost," Rafte said. "You wonder, 'Are we going to have another flood?'"

Oneida Mayor Max Smith saw the worst of the flooding last year not just in his own city, but also at his daughter's house in Herkimer. Smith spoke earlier this year at an Upstate severe weather conference in Albany, when the dominant, gloomy message was this: It's only going to get worse.

"I don't even have the words to express to you how devastating that would be -- not just materially, but psychologically as well," Smith said.

The city is preparing for the future. The waste water treatment plant in The Flats will need to be moved or reinforced to prevent it from shutting down again. New evacuation plans are being drawn, and city officials are considering an evacuation warning system.

On his home computer, Smith has bookmarked the National Weather Service website that displays river and stream gauges in New York. Every time it rains, he checks the Oneida Creek gauge.

In late spring this year, melting snow and a heavy rain brought the creek up to its banks. Smith went down to the Lenox Avenue bridge several times that day to watch the water flowing by. Minor flooding had started on the lower eastern bank, in Oneida County, but the water hadn't yet come into the city of Oneida.

Smith was joined on the bridge by residents of The Flats. They were watching. Wondering. Waiting.

The water receded.

"Talk about raw nerves," Smith recalled. "Residents were starting to take things out of their ground floors and bring them upstairs. They were asking me, 'Mayor, should we be evacuating?'

"I thought to myself, 'Oh my God, are we going to be doing this all summer?' I think probably we will."

See related story: Why Oneida suffered a record flood -- and why it might get worse in the future

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