Housing needs for volunteers slowing Valley fire rebuilding

Volunteers from around the country are signing up to help rebuild fire-ravaged Lake County. But a shortage of housing has kept many others away, slowing efforts to assist people whose burned homes were underinsured or uninsured.

“This has been painfully slow,” said Kevin Cox, who heads Hope Crisis Response Network, an Indiana-based nonprofit that coordinates volunteer groups to respond to disasters. Cox has been staying in Lake County in order to oversee projects.

The pace should pick up once a dormitory-style facility with a commercial kitchen is constructed in Middletown, a project that itself will require a group of skilled, volunteer construction workers.

“I'm hoping we can get it up in 30 days,” Cox said. The project will get underway once it has county approval, expected the second week of August.

The crisis response network, which draws on volunteers from across the United States and Canada, plans to build between 80 and 100 homes over the next five years. Nearly 2,000 structures, including 1,281 single-family homes, were destroyed when the Valley fire raged through 76,067 acres in western Lake County in September. Four people died and four firefighters were injured.

The network this year has completed one home. Another five are in various stages of construction, Cox said. Three dozen people are on a waiting list for the network's help and new applicants are being accepted.

“We're working with skeleton (volunteer) crews,” Cox said. The crews have been comprised largely of people who live close enough to drive home at the end of a workday. Some have been able to stay occasionally at a Middletown school gymnasium and Lion's Club facility, Cox said.

Normally, he is able to rally enough volunteers from churches and other groups to build several homes at a time, each taking about 14 to 16 weeks to complete. They typically volunteer for weeklong shifts.

Building materials are purchased with monetary donations while the labor is all volunteer. Fundraising efforts have yielded about $1 million since last year, Cox said. Materials for the 5,600-square-foot dormitory building will cost about $250,000, and materials for each home cost between $55,000 and $60,000. It took months to find a suitable dormitory location acceptable to the community, Cox said. Residents objected to an earlier proposal to locate the dormitory building on vacant land at Trailside Park, he said. That location also would have required environmental review.

Instead, it will be located on the site of a former senior center, near the rodeo arena in Middletown's Central Park. The old building will be demolished and replaced with a new steel structure, he said. It will include a commercial kitchen and restrooms with showers and house 60 people at a time, Cox said.

Once the network's building goals are met, the structure will be donated to the Middletown Central Park Association. It would be suitable for a number of uses, including as an emergency shelter, Cox said.

You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 707-462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MendoReporter