WIXOM LAKE AREA STORIES
By Alexandra Norton
The Wagner Family
Melissa and Harry Wagner’s house on Wixom Lake in Hope, Michigan, was completely destroyed during the flood that occurred in May, 2020. Aside from the actual structure of the home being destroyed from water damage, and objects crashing into the house, they lost many valuables that could never be replaced. The Wagners have owned their home for over 11 years and planned on retiring there.
“We repaired the entire house ourselves since we’ve owned it, we’ve done everything,” Melissa explained. “We don’t have the energy to start from scratch and do it again. We’d be wasting the best years of our retirement doing that, it’s sad knowing that we’re at a point we just need to sell it and move on.”
The Wagners explained that they have at least $100,000 in damages to their home, and they received no money from their insurance to help pay for the costs. They have only done minimal work to the house so far, such as ripping up all the flooring and walls that had too much water damage. After this, they felt too discouraged to keep working.
“I’ve moved on from the fact that our house is gone. I’ve accepted that,” Melissa said. “The house can be rebuilt, but I’ll never get back all of the memories that I lost.”
They plan on doing minimal repairs to the house before putting it on the market and moving on. As sad as it was to lose it, Melissa and Harry just want to enjoy their retirement, and it’s too upsetting to keep going back to the place they used to love.
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PHOTO FROM THE WAGNER FAMILY
The Barton Family
With the Edenville dam failing the systems of lakes and rivers connecting to the dam have been drained. Thousands of lake front property owners affected and left to put their homes and lives back together. Wixom Lake residents Pam and Ray Barton watched in horror as Wixom Lake drained in seconds, damaging their homes and neighbors alike.
“We had lots of neighbors that helped us, we had our grandkids that came up and helped us. We was pretty fortunate they all come up,” Ray said. Ray and Pam, a 71-year-old couple wadded in the waters of their basement during the night of the flooding, managing to grab what they could before the water levels rose, along with the fear of being electrocuted. 3 inches of mud caked the floor and walls of their basement, it took them two months alone to dry the basement out to the point of assessing the repairs. “We had no power, no gas, no nothing. The M30 bridge everything run under that, that all got destroyed when the bridge caved in all of our utilities got wiped out,” Ray said.
Seeing the wasteland off a lake that now sits in front the Barton’s living room was shocking. Their lake front property is now reduced to what’s hardly passable for a stream. With the loss of the lake the Barton’s home value has diminished tremendously. Seeing their home values decreased by 50%. It’s hard to hear about how much money and time has been spent into saving their home and them expected to pay for the refilling of the lake. This disaster could have been avoided; it also could have gone a lot worse than it did. What if the Barton’s weren’t as fortunate as they were? Putting public safety over personal wealth and gain needs to be the main priority, actually give a fuck about dam maintenance and think of the future.
