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The devastating floods that ravaged Roswell last month have left a large number of people displaced, but a massive effort to repair the damage and get people back in their homes is underway.

A drive through areas along the Spring River will reveal an army of utility, city and contractor vehicles swarming the neighborhoods to repair homes, businesses and streets.

"There's a lot of work to do," Fred Ortega said Thursday morning as he stopped by his daughter's house on Park Place. A man from Southern Baptist Relief also arrived at the home in a work truck to spray the house for mold.

Ortega said the water reached just above carpet level in the house during the flood.

All of the carpeting, as well as a lot of household items, had to be removed after the flood, he said.

He said he was pleased with the way the contractors hired by the city hauled away the debris.

Ortega said his daughter was staying at his house here in Roswell until she could move back into his house, possibly in about a month.

"There's a lot of work to do," he said.

He said it would be great if his daughter could be in the home before Christmas.

Edith Martinez, who lives on Pennsylvania Avenue, said she was doing okay in the aftermath of recent floods in Roswell and had begun the daunting task of recovery.

"I have the regular level cleaned up," she said.

Martinez said she was luckier than some of her neighbors, because the floor in her house was about a foot higher off the ground than most homes in the area.

Still, her basement would need to be dried out and treated for mold.

Martinez said dealing with government agencies had been "a little hard."

She said she had been trying to apply with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) but was having ID problems online.

"I will try a different way," she said.

There have been some problems in her neighborhood with people coming in and stealing because all of the fences are down, Martinez said.

Up the hill a couple of blocks on N. Washington Avenue, Samuel Reyes and Candelario Herrera, workers from a local repair company, were fixing the fence and repairing the inside of a home damaged by the flooding of the Spring River.

Herrera said everything in the house had to be replaced because the home had four to five feet of water inside during the flood.

He said the company has been working on the house for about two weeks, after having to wait for things to dry out inside.

The residents were staying near the Roswell Air Center, Herrera said.

The company he works for is doing around eight houses in the area, he said, but work was slowed because some homes still need to dry out.

On Fourth Street, Manuel Payne was in the driveway working on a car damaged during the flood.

The car belongs to the college-age son of the homeowners, Zach and Candace Marshall, he said.

The young man was visiting home when the flood occurred, Payne said.

Repairing a car damaged by flooding will not be an easy task.

"I can't even pull codes on it," he said.

Payne said he was working on the car as a friend of the family.

"They know I'm kind of a racecar guy, and I offered to try to get it going," he said.

Inside the garage, now piled high with building materials, Zach Marshall said the rebuilding was going "slow."

"It's going well for what the situation is," he said. "We got the materials and we're putting stuff together."

The family is doing most of the work themselves, he said.

Candace Marshall said the process is "a big learning curve."

"Me and the kids are learning a lot," she said.

The Marshalls' four children have been coping pretty well, she said, with the college-aged son having returned to school.

"It's been hard on him not to be here," Candace Marshall said.

Zach Marshall said he was pleased with the response he has gotten from government agencies, such as FEMA.

"FEMA has been pretty fast," he said, noting that rumors that the agency was not helping people appeared to be overblown.

While the home did not have flood insurance, Zach Marshall said his insurance agent has been helpful.

Candace Marshall said the family has received a lot of help from the church community, family and friends.

"I don't know how people do it themselves," she said.

She commented that her 14-year-old son Asher, who is homeschooled, was learning a lot in his impromptu "shop class."

The Marshall family is not yet able to return home, and Zach Marshall said a lot of people in the neighborhood had been displaced as well.

"As far as I know, everybody is gone," Candace Marshall said of the neighbors.

"A lot of people with big families of three or four kids are staying in two-bedroom apartments," her husband said.

"It's been a 90-degree turn in life," Candace Marshall said. "We have to adjust."

She said the flood left the home with no kitchen, no bathroom and no plumbing.

Zach Marshall said the plumbing in the house, which was built in 1950, is so old it just "falls apart in your hands," and all of it needs to be replaced.

With the sheet rock already pulled out, Candace Marshall was able to point out a high-water mark on some structural woodwork she said was from a flood in the 1950s. The watermark was most likely left by a Spring River flood in 1954. It did not appear that the water in that flood reached as high in the home as the more recent one.

Zach Marshall said his brother-in-law from Montana, who remodels houses, was going to come down and help.

"He's my ace in the hole," he said.

The couple spent 10 hours on the roof during the flood, Candace Marshall said.

"We went up there with sleeping bags and tarps and dogs," she said.

The family's cats stayed in the house on the bunk beds, and all made it through the flood safely.

"I think we are further along than a lot of people," Candace Marshal said. "We began ripping out sheet rock two days into it."

The flood ripped through the couple's backyard, knocking down fences, moving a storage shed, and leaving a pile of debris, including two windshields and a vehicle from a dealership upstream.

All of the debris would have to be moved to the front of the house before contractors from the city would remove it, she said.

"It even uprooted all of my carrots," she pointed out.

Candace Marshall said she hadn't had much of a problem with looters, and people who want to take things have usually asked first.

She said they had several neighbors who also rode out the flood on their roofs, including a neighbor with a preschooler and a toddler.

The Marshalls are faced with purchasing all new appliances and replacing all the sheetrock up to 48 inches, but Candace Marshall said the family is hoping to be back in the house by Christmas.

"It would be a Christmas miracle," she said.