St. Mary's Needs Help After Being Flooded for the Third Time

St Mary's Church in Spring Valley has been flooded for the third time. Bret and Veronica talked to Vera Skop, secretary of the church board about how frustrating it is to rebuild again.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
They say that three times the charm, but there is
nothing charming about being flooded three times. It's exactly what
happened to Saint Mary's Orthodox Church in Spring Valley. The
church on Campbe Road sits in front of a sloping
hill that houses Spring Valley Academy Middle School above it.
Vera Scope is the secretary of the church board and

(00:21):
says poor drainage on the school property has flooded them
out three times since two thousand and nine. Latest was
January first.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
It went just right over the playing field, took a
bunch of dirt with it and brought might into the apartment,
to our residence, into the hall, and into the church.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
And there's really nothing you can do about this, because
it's not your property.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Exactly. We've got to put this, make this retaining wall higher.
We maybe somebody evens have put in like a big
pipe to divert it. But our first step is to
dry everything out and we will just live with it
that way, and then we'll do some fundraisers and then
we'll do the next step and well, but we're not
making it beautiful until this gets fixed.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
They had barely recovered from the last flood back in
twenty twenty four, the flooring was brand new and it
took a lot of work to make the church usable again.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Luckily, in twenty four we had a major donor, AH,
so we got over one hundred thousand dollars, so that
paid for most of the work. We were supposed to
still paint everything.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
For now they are holding onto the service outside of
the building. Scope says many of the members of the
church are refugees from the Ukraine War.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
When they first came over, it was March of twenty two.
They would come to the House of Ukraine and that
was before there was United for Ukraine. There were no programs,
but they managed to get away and they would tell
us how they got on the trains, their stories of
just escaping. It's sad, scary, and then people have to
go through this. You know, this is twenty first century.

(01:53):
We really thought those days were over, but obviously not.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Scope says it's very depressing to do all that work
and get the church back together only to have a
flood again. But she says it could be worse.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
When we talk about our flood here and we see
what the people are going through that they have no electricity,
they have rolling blackouts and it's minus zero degrees at
that point, we say, yes, we're going through a lot,
but it's nothing compared to our friends and families are
going through. We pray, We pray for them all the time.
We do what we can, send funds, tell them that

(02:27):
Americans are rooting for them, and they are amazing, and
they're resilient what they have gone through, and they're and
they're not giving up. And so we're just very proud
of them. And I guess that comes from years of
like you said, of life has never been easy. The
history of Ukraine has always been very difficult. They've gone

(02:48):
through man made famines Chernobyl. That's just in the last
one hundred years, much less before Siberia. They're resilient and
they and they know who they are and they're fighting
for it.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
It hasn't been easy for the church, as you can imagine,
they were driven from their homes because of the attack
by Russia.

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Some have returned, but many of them have stayed. The
children who came knowing no English and not only speak
English and have certainly contributed to San Diego and certainly
have contributed to the Ukrainian organizations. Hardworking people that still
maintain ties with Ukraine, and we'll see once the war's
over whether they will return. Some will, some won't, because

(03:28):
you know, once the kids grow up here, that's a
whole different story.

Speaker 1 (03:32):
We reached out to Spring Valley Academy and I talked
to Superintendent David Feliciano, who says it's a decades long
issue with a drainage culvert on Rogers Road just north
of the school. He says when it rains a lot,
the culvert clogs with debris from nearby properties and that
leads to the flooding. He says the County of San
Diego is responsible for maintaining that culvert.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
And by the way, if you're wondering how can I help,
Saint Mary's is in need of donations so they can
fix the church again. But they are also looking for
carpenters or anyone with house building or landscaping skills to
help them out.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
They do have a go fundme Paige by the way, too,
last time I checked, they really hadn't raised a lot
of money, so they need donations. Go fundme. You could
just look up Saint Mary's Spring Valley and again carpenter's.
Anybody who has any skills