WALLOWA — The biggest news to happen this year in Wallowa — and maybe the county — was the hailstorm that pummeled the town Aug. 11, leaving nearly every west-facing window shattered, car windows smashed and roofs and siding damaged.

Scope of the damage

Christy Lieuallen, of the Blue Mountain Long-Term Recovery Group, a nonprofit organization that is the recipient and disburser of relief funds, said the group has 330 cases they’re looking at, all of which are requesting a piece of the recovery pie. Each of those cases usually includes more than one person.

So far, that recovery pie has been infused with $2 million Gov. Kate Brown requested that the state Joint Legislative Emergency Management Board put toward recovery for Wallowa. The board approved the request Sept. 23.

But recipients are still waiting for it.

“We’re still waiting; the money hasn’t come in yet,” county Commissioner John Hillock told his fellow commissioners during their Dec. 21 meeting.

Wallowa Mayor Gary Hulse said the recovery efforts are going as well as can be expected, given the winter weather.

“We’ve got some of the roofs on,” he said. “Now we’re just waiting on good weather.”

He added that there is still work being done on windows and siding that can be done in winter.

There was one business in town that just watched as the hailstones bounced off a couple of door windows. Jay Hinds, who retires this month after operating the Blonde Strawberry for eight years, said he was impressed with how those windows withstood the pelting.

“The windows in the basement all got broken, but the windows in those doors — whoever made that glass should be making glass for everybody,” Hinds said. “My wife and I were in here when that was going on — we’d just closed — and we were getting pelted by golf ball-sized hail and we were sure they were going to break, but they did not.”

Concerns have been expressed all along that the $2 million would not be sufficient.

“We don’t know; don’t have a clue,” Hillock said. “I hear all kinds of rumors.”

Indeed, recent estimates by Blue Mountain and the city of Wallowa indicate far more will be needed. Hulse said that the city sent out paperwork to all within the Wallowa ZIP code — about 500 — and they had received more than 180 back by early October. The estimated damage on those tallied around $7 million.

Lieuallen agreed, saying damage caused by the storm was likely around $7 million to $8 million.

“That’s going to be an underestimate,” she said.

Funding recovery

No one’s quite certain what’s taking the state so long to deliver on its $2 million pledge, but Hillock said it’s being held up by the Department of Justice. Lieuallen believes the DOJ is working as fast as it can.

“There’s a lot of hurdles to jump,” she said.

Hillock said that just because damage was incurred, that doesn’t mean a property owner will receive a payment.

“They have over 300 requests for funding,” he said. “A lot of them won’t get funded because they don’t need the money as bad as some other people.”

He said the smallest claim he heard of was for $300 for a windshield on a car owned by someone with no insurance. He said he believes that one will get funded.

But others with larger claims — and more resources — may not.

“If you have $10,000 in your bank account and you’re short $500 deductible, you probably won’t get funded,” he said, but actual need also comes into play, thus the $300 windshield.

Hillock and Lieuallen said Blue Mountain is working hard to process all the claims. In deciding who gets funded, the group does its best to keep the recipients anonymous by removing names and replacing them with numbers and the actual needs.

“They try to do it as fair as they can,” Hillock said. “Maybe they’ll get going after the first of the year.”

But for now — more than four months after the storm — the recovery money is still in state hands.

Commissioner Susan Roberts said Wallowans often call her asking about it, but the money isn’t going to the county.

“The county has not received any money,” she said. “I get those phone calls, still.”

Lieuallen said Blue Mountain had crews in Wallowa to meet with property owners to help assess the damages for several weeks after the storm. Those regular meetings have ceased, but the group does have a case manager there and is in the process of hiring another.

Looking ahead

Lieuallen said the group also has set up a variety of specialty committees. There is a construction committee to solicit and organize construction crews. There is a funders committee to help with unmet financial needs. There is a volunteers committee to organize volunteer efforts, for which Wallowa County has become known.

She also said they have a spiritual/emotional committee.

“If people are in need of someone to talk to, we have a committee for them,” she said.

But even if all the needed funding would come through tomorrow, it still will take a while to restore a semblance of normality to the battered town.

It will be at least months before normal can come back to Wallowa.

“I’m sure it’ll be next summer or so before we get back to what we’d call normal,” Hulse said. “It was quite a stress on everybody in the city of Wallowa, management and citizens; everybody’s had quite a lot of stress due to that hailstorm.”

For more year-end coverage, see pages A3, A8 and A9, and our special section, “A Year of Fire and Ice,” beginning on page B1 in today’s Chieftain.