Troy Marten's Story
Thick cement blocks now hold Troy Martens’ Missouri Valley home high above the ground. He raised the house several feet after a foot and a half of water swept through his first floor during flooding over a year ago.

Today, like other Missouri Valley residents, Troy is still working on repairing the damages his home suffered in early May last year.

It all started in the middle of the night with power outages and fire truck sirens, said Troy, who was at home and recovering from a broken leg. His sister took him to her house where her family was fighting to keep water out of their basement.

By early morning a levee break had sent as much as four feet of water through some parts of town and when residents were later allowed to see their homes, they came in by boats.

It wasn’t until several days later that Troy returned home to survey the damage and was shocked.

“It was full of mud, things that had floated everywhere different places,” he said. “You just didn’t realize how much stuff you had actually lost.”

In the face of tremendous loss, Troy and other residents found an outpouring of community and volunteer support from neighbors and strangers.

But today, a year later, Troy and others are still wading through the recovery process.

“Long-term recovery was a lot more than I thought,” he said. “I figured I would be back in my home by now. My biggest problem was my insurance company, and I’m still messing with them.”

In addition to raising the foundation, Troy has spent the past year ripping out plaster, lathe and floors from his home, and doing remodeling work.

“I’ve raised it, and done a lot of different stuff inside,” he said. “It will be better than it was in the end, but that’s a lot to go through to do it.”

A local case advocate, hired by Lutheran Services in Iowa, is helping Troy line up volunteers to finish his house and find solutions to some of his other unmet needs.

“She’s been checking on me, and she got me a computer since mine was ruined,” he said. “It’s been a lot of help knowing that there is help there and will be there. It gives you a little confidence and something to look forward to.”

After a long year of recovery and rebuilding, Troy is finally feeling optimistic about the future and hopeful he can finish his home by summer’s end.

Home. It’s one thing that all of us should always appreciate.

“Never take anything for granted,” Troy said. “You never know what the tide may bring.”

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