On an April afternoon in 1978, the forces of nature overcame the folly of man when the Roanoke River, enraged by torrential rains, flooded an apartment complex built on its banks.
More than 200 residents of Willow River apartments were forced to flee, prompting a threat from the city of Salem to condemn a complex that had flooded at least once before.
“If they [the apartment owners] don’t come up with some workable plan to assure us that people won’t be forced out again with their belongings on their backs, we won’t allow these apartments to re-open,” Jim Nininger of the building inspector’s office said at the time.
Yet the apartments remain open, 28 years and seven floods later.
How a 300-unit apartment complex built on a flood plain has survived over the years is not a story of grit or human perseverance. It is a story of a federally backed insurance program that has allowed a flood-prone property to rebuild time and time again.
Since 1977, Willow River has received $10,719,606.43 from the National Flood Insurance Program to repair damages caused by nine floods, according to figures obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
The $10.7 million is twice the complex’s current assessed value. And it accounts for about two-thirds of the claims paid to all insured properties in the city of Salem since 1978.
With history bound to repeat itself at Willow River, some wonder why the federal government continues to insure the property.
“It’s quite clear this is going to flood again,” said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. “What we’ve done is locked the taxpayers into paying for this property again and again and again.”
In harm’s way
Created by Congress in 1968, the National Flood Insurance Program was envisioned as a protection of last resort for owners of flood-prone property that the private sector was unwilling to insure.
The program was supposed to be self-sustaining, with premiums covering losses and administrative costs. But Congress has spent more than $1 billion to balance NFIP’s books over the years, according to Ellis. Then Hurricane Katrina and two other major storms hit the Gulf Coast, forcing the program to borrow billions more from the U.S. treasury.
Now flooded by red ink, NFIP has also been criticized for permitting the rich to build their beachfront vacation homes with financial impunity to the risk of hurricanes.
But at Willow River, the benefits go to a business that relies on rent from its less privileged tenants.
“What flood insurance has done, in some respects, is instead of moving low- and middle-income people out of harm’s way, it has kept them in harm’s way,” Ellis said. “Because if the flood insurance didn’t exist, the business owner would have at some point pulled the plug and moved on.”
Although NFIP no doubt helped keep the complex afloat financially, it eventually ran into trouble. In January, the owner of the note took control of the property rather than foreclose on Willow River Associates, a Georgia partnership that had owned the complex since 1976.
Robert Krasnoff, one of the partners of Willow River Associates, declined to comment. So did the new owners, PAMI Willow River LLC, a Delaware company with ties to Lehman Brothers Holding, a New York brokerage firm.
Four months after the change in ownership, many of the apartments remain empty and some still show signs of flood damage. The plan is to fix the place up, get it fully leased and “make it a good place to live,” said Brigitte Pulliam of Pinnacle Realty, the company hired by the new owners to manage the complex.
One change is obvious from the sign out front: It’s now called Salem Ridge apartments.
The willow trees and the river are still there, though. So is the risk of another flood.
Steve Cowling, a former Willow River resident who moved out in 2004 after losing most of what he owned to muddy floodwaters, wondered recently if the new name is an attempt to mask an old problem.
“Where’s the ridge?” Cowling said. “Because it’s not sitting on one. It’s very deceptive.”
Flood plain development
In the early 1970s, when Willow River was being built, a flood came along and washed the construction materials away. It could have been taken as a omen.
But the developers were determined, and there was nothing government could do to stop them.
Salem did not have an ordinance at the time that regulated development in the flood plain. It does now, and about the only permitted use for the site today would be a park, appraiser Herbert Kilbourn wrote in a 2004 report for the city.
Built before the ordinance was passed, Willow River was exempt from the restrictions, even when the complex changed owners. And because of its flood plain location, the complex — and its new owners — qualified for a NFIP policy.
The $10.7 million that Willow River has received since 1977 was for an average of one flood every three years.
The numbers were provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers the program. FEMA officials acknowledged that flood-prone properties such as Willow River have become a drain on the insurance program.
Adjusted for inflation, the amount Willow River received has a value of $15.2 million in today’s dollars.
It is “extremely unusual” for a single property to receive so much money under the program, according to George Riedel, deputy executive director of Association of State Floodplain Managers in Madison, Wis.
Nininger, the former building inspector in Salem who is now retired and living in Myrtle Beach, S.C., was surprised to learn recently that the complex is still around.
“You just can’t keep pouring money into a flood-prone situation,” he said.
$10.7 million-plus
Large as it is, the sum of $10.7 million is not the total tab. Most of that amount is for damage to the three-story brick buildings at Willow River and losses of complex-owned property such as carpet and appliances.
Losses suffered by residents — the water-logged furniture, the submerged stereos and televisions, the mud-caked personal belongings — are not included in the $10.7 million unless the tenants had their own policies with the federal insurance program, according to FEMA spokeswoman Niki Edwards. Such policies are quite rare, several area insurance agents said.
For the most part, Willow River residents have recovered their losses by filing claims with FEMA’s disaster relief fund. Citing privacy issues, FEMA does not identify individuals who receive disaster relief.
Several residents were surprised recently to hear how much the complex has received over the years — especially considering how the management downplays the risk of flooding to potential tenants, they said.
Pulliam of Pinnacle Realty, the only person associated with the complex who would comment for this story, declined to talk about flooding.
A paragraph in the lease provided by resident Ed Pratt explains that the complex is located in a 100-year flood plain, and a handout advises tenants to purchase their own flood insurance because the complex will not be held responsible for their losses.
Before he moved into Willow River in June 2004, Pratt asked about the chances of a flood.
“They pooh-poohed it,” Pratt said. “They said the place has only flooded twice in the last 20 years.”
Three months later, it flooded.
24 units shut down
After the floodwaters recede, and after the construction crews finish their work and move on, life usually returns to normal at Willow River.
There seems to be no shortage of people willing to pay rents between $560 and $665 for the two- and three-bedroom apartments. After all, the complex is conveniently located next to a hospital, a bus line and major thoroughfares, Kilbourn noted in an appraisal that put its fair market value at $7 million.
Some residents say that management capitalizes on the recent renovations to the flooded apartments by pitching the nice fresh carpet and the sparkling new appliances.
Although the ground-level apartments have been swamped repeatedly, it was only after the last flood, in September 2004, that Salem began to enforce the condemnation threat it first made in 1978.
After inspecting the complex, building and zoning administrator Charles Aldridge determined that damage to three buildings was substantial enough — with the cost of repairs at least half the structure’s value — to subject them to a previously unenforced building code.
The code requires that occupied buildings be elevated to one foot above the base flood elevation. Faced with the all but impossible task of raising a three-story brick building, the only alternative was to shut down the 24 ground level apartments in the three buildings.
But why did the city wait so long to take such a step?
‘It’s serious stuff’
By the time the September 2004 flood hit, the words “Willow River” had become synonymous with flooding within the circle of emergency management officials.
After learning about the latest disaster, FEMA became concerned that Salem could lose its NFIP policy as a result of not enforcing its flood plain ordinance, according to Debra Mills, director of the recovery and mitigation division for Virginia Department of Emergency Management.
To qualify for the program, localities must implement and enforce flood plain development plans. If a locality loses its standing with NFIP, property owners in its flood plain would face the arduous task of obtaining insurance from private companies.
“It’s serious stuff,” said Mills, who added that Salem cooperated with state and federal officials in shutting the 24 units down. “I don’t want to say the city was strong-armed or brow-beaten or anything like that,” she said.
“We just made them aware of the seriousness of the Willow River situation.”
In the past, the city has allowed Willow River to re-open after each flood following an inspection by building officials. City manager Forest Jones declined to comment on Mills’ remarks about flood-plain enforcement, referring those questions to Aldridge, the city’s building and zoning administrator.
The 2004 flood was the first time the city applied a more stringent standard to Willow River by looking for substantial damage to each building, Aldridge said.
The severe damage from that storm, combined with the cumulative effects of previous ones, prompted the action, Aldridge said. As for the issue of the city’s flood insurance policy, “it was a concern, but it was not the sole driving factor,” he said.
Although some have suggested shutting down more apartments, Salem officials say it’s not that simple.
“We’ve tried to condemn it and we can’t do it,” Mayor Sonny Tarpley said. “It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”
Tarpley said he had not been briefed on the process Salem used last year to shut down 24 units. But if — or, more likely, when — the complex floods again, the city will subject the remaining apartments to the same heightened review they underwent in 2004.
Burdening the system
If the cumulative cost to rebuild Willow River after each flood is more than it’s worth, why doesn’t the government just purchase the property, raze the buildings and build a park or a greenway in their place?
It might — if the price is right.
Since 1993, federal funds have been used to buy out more than 20,000 properties to reduce flood damage. An apartment complex such as Willow River could be added to the list, FEMA spokesman Butch Kinerney said.
“That’s one of the questions we need to ask,” Kinerney said. “Maybe we need to say: ‘You’ve had 10 losses over the past 25 years. Maybe we can’t afford to insure you anymore.’ ”
After the 2004 flood, the possibility of a buyout was discussed, according to Mills, of the state Department of Emergency Management. But there wasn’t enough money available at the time to bring the owners to the negotiating table.
“That’s a money-maker,” Mills said of the complex, “so they had no interest whatsoever.”
But with 1 percent of the most flood-prone properties insured by NFIP accounting for 38 percent of the payments, there’s a move on to make more money available for buyouts, according to the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
“These properties are burdening the system to a point that is no longer reasonable,” Mills said.
Although Willow River is one of the city’s worst flood risks, it poses more danger to property than personal safety, said Pat Counts, chief of the Salem Fire-EMS Department. Flash flooding is not a problem. An automated flood-warning system gives authorities time to order evacuations before the river overflows its banks. There have been no deaths or serious injuries caused by floods at the complex.
That’s not to say the city is happy with the apartment’s location.
“I think we’re looking at a case of hindsight being 20-20,” Counts said. “I think when the developer built it at the time, he didn’t realize the potential for flooding. History has told us it probably wasn’t a good idea.”
A matter of time
On an April afternoon, cardboard boxes cluttered the living room of Shawn Lee’s and Dee Hatcher-Lee’s apartment at Salem Ridge. The Lees were packing up and moving to a house in Vinton that sits on higher ground.
In September 2004, an angry river invaded their first-floor apartment, leaving a high-water mark on the walls that reached to Hatcher-Lee’s neck. “We lost everything,” Lee said.
From the time they first moved in, the Lees had worried about flooding. “In the back of your mind, you just hope it doesn’t happen,” Hatcher-Lee said.
As they spoke, the Lees were a stone’s throw from where the Roanoke River crosses under Electric Road and continues its path along the complex’s southern boundary.
The river seemed more like a creek that day as its waters rippled harmlessly by. But with history as their guide, the Lees know that some day, the river will rise again.
News researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.