Months After Humboldt Earthquakes, Recovery Continues

Updating Humboldt County’s Board of Supervisors on recovery from the late 2022 and early 2023 earthquakes, representatives of non-profit groups said work is ongoing, with four homes still awaiting repair.

Fielding the update at its April 8 meeting, the board was told of the successes and challenges of the county’s earthquake recovery effort.

It’s mostly focused on the City of Rio Dell, which got the most damage when a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck on Dec. 22, 2022.

A 5.4 magnitude earthquake on New Year’s Day was among multiple aftershocks.

County Public Information Specialist Cati Gallardo said more than 20 Rio Dell building permits for repair are still active, as “long term recovery takes time.”

The county created a federally-sourced $1 million emergency fund for fixing homes, with $500,000 allocated for Habitat for Humanity.

Of that, $250,000 remains to be spent for the four homes yet to be repaired.

“What we are requesting is that we can get the 250,000 and then just start construction on all of them,” said Camille Benner of Habitat for Humanity, adding the money will be spent by the end of May at the latest, depending on weather.

Habitat needs to tap the county fund, as reimbursements from other sources can be slow.

“We have millions of dollars that we have expended that normally come back as a reimbursement that we have not been reimbursed on,” said Benner. “So we are not in a position right now to cover the construction costs and I don’t want to leave contractors waiting to be reimbursed.”

The families involved “have waited an incredibly long time and they’re very, very excited,” she continued.

Habitat for Humanity is part of a group of organizations working on recovery, with total funding for earthquake-related repairs at $1.9 million, from a variety of sources.

Kerry Venegas of Changing Tides Family Services said the scope of work expanded as the extent of damage was confirmed.

“The challenge with recovery is that you don’t know what you don’t know until you start actually doing the work,” she continued.”You may find things that are additional damage when you start lifting up a house to look at the foundation and then you find out that you have some damage to pipes, and then you find out that you may need a French drain because everything has shifted so much in the natural disaster.”

There was some discussion by supervisors on the length of time and the complicated process for repairs.

Board Chair Michelle Bushnell described it as a learning experience.

“I don’t think that the process worked as well as we’d hoped,” she said. “We’ve learned a lot, I’ll say that, and I continue to get calls from folks from Rio Dell saying they didn’t qualify – they didn’t this, they didn’t that, or they did their repairs themselves so they could get back in their homes and that makes them not qualified. And so it’s a bit been a very frustrating process.”
Bushnell expressed some disappointment on the scale of funding.

“I think our board had hoped that we would touch more homes than we did,” she said. “A million dollars doesn’t go very far and there’s a lot of red tape.”

Thirty-three homes have been repaired so far.

Ninety homes were red-tagged – meaning left uninhabitable – following the earthquakes and 350 homes were damaged.

The only action taken by the board was receiving and filing the update, as money from the emergency fund is already allocated and in the county budget, with its use administrated by staff.