Couple living in home despite major hurricane damage, community steps in

Hurricane Debby wrecked a Dillsburg couple's home, and now they hope to start anew.

On Aug. 9, the storm came crashing into Don and Donna Bechtel's home of 43 years.

Just over a month later, on Friday, the Bechtel's journey back to their home began.

"I looked at her and I was like, 'What was that!?' We went back, opened the door and turned the light on and just mud, water everywhere," said Don Bechtel, recalling the storm on Aug. 9.

"You have an eight-foot cinder block wall here that caved in. You had about three and a half, four feet of water covering this entire basement," saidDJ Peltier, the project manager and volunteer with Crisis Relief and Recovery.

The Bechtels, both 72, are looking to stay in their Dillsburg home despite these conditions.

"It's weird to look out the bedroom window into a deep hole into the ground, and we're just hanging out over this hole in the ground. I just – I don't like that at all," said Donna Bechtel.

The couple, who lives on a fixed income, says they were forced out of their home when the storm came. They received no help from insurance or local emergency management and were forced to pay more than $2,000 of hotel expenses out of pocket.

"We can't pay for something like that. We certainly don't have the resources to suddenly repair a house like that," said Donna.

"They lost a washer and dryer. They lost a refrigerator, chairs. These are all things that you'd think, 'Oh, insurance will cover that.' Insurance didn't cover this," said concerned neighbor, Laura Baker, who lives right across the way.

Luckily, many other neighbors, like Baker, have offered to help for free.

"That means the neighbor that offers to make meals for the crews. That means somebody who calls me and says, 'I have an excavator.' That's amazing. Somebody who calls me and says, 'I can do a drop ceiling,'" said Baker.

"To think that when you put a need like this out into the community that the community shows up, it shows that there's still really amazing people in the world. You just gotta find them," said Peltier.

"You know, if they're getting donations and donations of materials and manpower, I mean, we couldn't have done that," said Donna.