Eleanor Bird has all her important documents tucked neatly in a manila envelope. She brings it with her every time she talks to someone from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or anyone else helping to repair her Clendenin home.
On Wednesday, she walked down the road to where FEMA had its last disaster recovery center set up in Kanawha County to ask a couple of last-minute questions about the kind of aid she will receive. She made sure to go down Wednesday because, at 5 p.m., the center, along with two others in Greenbrier County, shut down.
Starting today, if Bird or other survivors of the June 23 flash floods need help, they'll have to call a FEMA hotline to finish their application before the Sept. 7 deadline.
"It's not a lot of money, and it's not as much as they're giving other people," Bird, 78, said as she walked out of the center, "but I'll take it."
Much of Bird's house was saved from the flood, but her basement was filled with 7 feet of water. That's where she and her 80-year-old husband, Bob, live. It's where they kept the original bedroom set they bought after they got married 57 years ago. It's where they kept their yearbooks, their clothes.
"I told my husband, I said, 'I hope no one dies or gets sick anytime soon, because we won't have any nice clothes to wear to a funeral,'" she said laughing. "Isn't that awful? I shouldn't say things like that."
But she does anyway. She's cried a lot during the past two months. Sometimes, it seems like she has whole days where she can't stop crying. Laughing makes it a little easier.
"I think the FEMA workers are doing what the policies would allow," Bird said.
At first, she didn't want to ask for help. For days, she tried to clean up her home by herself. Because of her husband's health, he stayed in a hotel in Charleston to keep out of the heat. She'd scrub all day and, when it would finally get dark, she'd turn on a small lantern to see.
Bird didn't want to ask for help because she thought others had it worse than she did. She thought that if she took some of the cleaning supplies that people from around the state had brought in as donations, someone else might not get what they needed.
As of Wednesday, FEMA had received 8,600 registrations for its Individuals and Households program, with $39.2 million already approved. The Small Business Administration has approved 718 loans in 11 counties, totaling $46.9 million in aid.
Adrianne Laneave, a public affairs specialist for the SBA, said it's important for all those affected by the flood to register with FEMA before the Sept. 7 deadline, even if they don't need immediate help.
If they qualify, homeowners can receive a $200,000 loan from the SBA to repair their house and an additional $40,000 to repair their personal property. Laneave said the SBA sees these funds as a way to help the community that supports the local businesses so people might not have to move after a major disaster and businesses have the customer base to rebuild. Plus, the SBA can provide 20 percent of the verified damage of a house if the homeowner wants to mitigate future disasters - raising up the house's foundation, for example.
Business owners and nonprofits can receive a loan for up to $2 million to rebuild the physical damage to their businesses or an "economic injury loan." The latter type of loan could be used for a business that wasn't even flooded.
Laneave said the SBA has more lax policies when it comes to awarded loans, and that businesses can qualify for the economic injury loan by showing how they saw a dip in revenue after the floods.
"People get lost with our names, and they just think about small businesses," Laneave said. "We're definitely here for the small businesses, but small businesses rely on their communities. Communities are made up of homeowners. That's why we're here, to get the community back on its feet."
To contact FEMA and apply for assistance over the phone, dial 800-621-3362, (TTY) 1-800-462-7585 for the deaf or hard of hearing or by visiting www.disasterassistance.gov. FEMA officials say all of the same help that was available at one of the disaster recovery centers can be accessed over the phone.
To receive assistance, people must live in one of the 12 counties affected by the June floods - Clay, Fayette, Greenbrier, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Monroe, Nicholas, Pocahontas, Roane, Summers and Webster counties.
The deadline to apply for aid from FEMA, and to apply for any kind of aid from the SBA, is Sept. 7. Economic injury loans can be awarded as late as May 2017 for businesses who might have realized their revenue suffered long after the flood, but that can be awarded only after first applying with FEMA.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the number of counties that 718 loans from the Small Business Administration had been approved for. The correct number of counties is 11.
Reach Jake Jarvis at jake.jarvis@wvgazettemail.com, Facebook.com/newsroomjake, 304-348-7939 or follow @NewsroomJake on Twitter.