“Disaster Survivor Assistance Teams…have been to that location several times,” said Tiana Suber, a FEMA spokesperson. Instead, the agency reiterated its pledge to help the Harmon Gulch neighbors. The Press Banner asked FEMA multiple times about residents’ claims they’d been stood up, but it declined to answer. Konopa explained it was the second day in a row that FEMA didn’t show up. While FEMA gave them a lump-sum payment of $2,700, it seems like it’s going to take months to get contractors out to fix the road, she added. “We’re trying to get the authorities to make this a priority.” “You can only shop for what you can carry,” she said. His mom explains that things have just become more difficult since the washout. “I have to go to their houses a lot of the time,” said the boy, who was clutching a basketball. He knows his mom is still OK with him inviting friends over to play, but that’s been more challenging in the aftermath of the storms. “We can’t drive and we have to walk on the street.” “I have to take five-minute showers,” he said. The plates are not safe enough for vehicles to drive over. Residents of the Harmon Gulch neighborhood have been using metal plates to walk to their homes. Her 9-year-old brother Ely, a fourth grader, remembers the chaos of the storms, where-for safety-he had to sleep in the downstairs office in case a tree fell on the house. Now, she has to make her lunch the day beforehand and is awoken at 6:50am, so she can get ready before setting out down what her mom calls “the world’s steepest driveway.” Her 11-year-old daughter Lily, a fifth grader at Boulder Creek Elementary, says her days have become more regimented. “We have to walk this at least two times a day.” But to get there they have to cross Bear Creek Road, a busy commuter route to Silicon Valley. They were able to get their vehicle out and are now parked in the Fernwood neighborhood. Heather Konopa, 42, who lives in that first home with her husband-a veteran-their three kids, three dogs and “a bunch” of cats, said their road became impassable the night of Jan. The rest have dwindling supplies of drinking water, and all have been rationing heating materials. Only the first home is tied into the San Lorenzo Valley Water District-a connection that’s been propped up temporarily in a makeshift fashion with redwood branches. He appeared dejected to learn it was not, in fact, a federal official who’d pulled up. “Are you the FEMA guy?” a man waiting at the intersection of Harmon Gulch and Bear Creek Road asked a Press Banner reporter Sunday afternoon. The rural Santa Cruz County disaster victims have been running out of propane and water after their road was washed out by the series of January atmospheric rivers that swept through the region. Residents of the Harmon Gulch neighborhood, just outside of Boulder Creek, whose road washed out in the recent storms, say Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) officials stood them up for multiple meetings set for a location some had to walk a mile or more to reach.
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