Floods drove Kelly and Louis Orlando out of their home along the Nescopeck Creek in the Sleepy Hollow section of Butler Township three times in the past five years.
They’ve lost all their belongings twice and now live with their three children away from the creek in a mobile home provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We’re taking it one day at a time. It’s been extremely hard on all of us,” Kelly Orlando said Monday.
At the land along the Nescopeck where the Orlandos still owe a mortgage, a crew is constructing a new foundation where their house used to be.
The Lutheran Disaster Response Network of Northeastern Pennsylvania is organizing an effort to build the Orlandos a new house – above the high-water mark –with volunteer workers and donated materials.
On Monday, Dan Blaser of DDB Building Restoration in Drums was mixing mortar and arranging concrete blocks into the foundation’s walls with help from Fred Russo and Richard Marsh.
Blaser pointed to an opening foundation where he said his crew will install two-way doors.
Next time a flood occurs, water can flow in and then drain out. Blaser said the basement floor will be slate topped by crushed stone, and the family won’t store anything there that water could ruin.
The basement walls will rise 8 feet, which is 2 feet above the high-water mark for the lot.
“They’ve done their research,” said Ruth Doty, coordinator for preparedness and recovery for the Lutherans in Allentown.
Doty called the Orlandos after the Federal Emergency Management Agency asked her group to help the family. Together, she and the Orlandos put together a plan for building a new house.
Flood insurance provided a grant for the foundation, but for the rest of the work the Orlandos rely on volunteers.
Sons of a Carpenter, a group affiliated with Lutheran churches in the Lehigh Valley, agreed to build the frame for the house and finish the exterior.
The group also seeks $21,000 worth of materials for the exterior plus drywall, paint, plumbing and electrical supplies and appliances for inside.
“We’re looking for volunteers to finish off the inside,” Doty said. Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Conyngham will donate proceeds from an auction scheduled for April 5 to the Orlandos. Churches, civic groups and individuals are invited to volunteer and help build the house during the spring and summer, and donations of materials are welcome.
The Orlandos hope to move in by June or else they will have to start paying rent for the mobile home provided to them by the federal agency.
Kelly Orlando said her family had been living on their yard in two travel trailers provided by the federal agency when a flood swamped the trailers during Thanksgiving week in 2006.
Their flood insurance didn’t pay to replace their possessions because they were living in the trailers rather than their home, which was damaged beyond repair by a flood in June 2006.
“That was bad. We had roughly 5 feet of water in the house and only 7-foot ceilings. Everything we owned was destroyed,” she said of the June 2006 flood.
Two years before that – in September 2004 – flood waters also entered the house, causing damage that required the family to gut and rebuild the interior.
