BY SUSAN WARE

When 6-year-old Skylar Tobin went to climb out of bed on the morning of April 16, she stepped into a foot of water covering the floor of the bedroom she shared with her sister. She started to scream and ran to her closet where her cat was nursing a litter of kittens.

Her room, along with the rest of the lower level of the family’s split-level home, had flooded overnight and one of the newborn kittens wasn’t strong enough to swim. Skylar found it floating in her room.

“I heard her screaming and when I went running down the stairs, I could not believe what I saw,” said Skylar’s mother, Tia Tobin.

What happened next was a two-week odyssey of water, mold, tears and hospital stays that has left this family of eight living in one bedroom.

Tobin started bailing out the lower level, but the home the family had purchased last June did not have a sump pump or any sort of drainage, so as the water went out, it came right back in. Her husband, Sean, is self-employed and works 16 hours a day, seven days a week.

The culprit, said Tobin, was a space below the bathroom floor. Five feet by 1.5 feet, the drainage for the bathroom was not properly installed and it allowed for water to gush into the home during the heavy rains.

The water flooded three bedrooms that the Tobins’ six children, ranging from 12 years old to 5-month-old twins, slept in.

While the water damaged the furnace, washer and dryer, that was the least of the family’s problems.

Once the water receded, despite fans, bleaching and dehumidifiers, mold grew at a rapid pace. Family photos hanging on the walls had mold growing on the backs and had to be thrown out. Plastic totes stacked high in a closet and filled with clothes the Tobins would hand down between the children became filled with the dangerous mold.

Exposure to the mold caused the family to get sick, especially the 5-month-old, premature twins, Ava and Noah. Noah ended up hospitalized for a host of serious respiratory conditions.

“I am like a momma bear protecting her babies and this really put me to the test. I had to get my kids out of here. The air quality was so bad that we were all getting very sick.We had to get out of there,” said Tobin.

Some help arrives

One day during all of this, Tobin reached her last nerve. Her sister-in-law was with her and, not knowing how to help the family, reached out to her own church, the Grace Community in Rochester.

The pastor contacted Paula Young, who runs a New Hampshire-based ministry called “There’s No Place Like Home.”

Young’s ministry provides flood relief. Originally focused on New Orleans, her group has aided New Hampshire families during the Mother’s Day flood last year and the floods in April. She organized a youth group that had also aided in the flood areas of New Orleans, and they came to Auburn.

Tobin said the group saved them. Wearing haz-mat suits they removed and disposed off everything that was covered in mold – carpet, wall board, clothing and toys. The children’s baby books, old family photos and other sentimental things all had to be tossed into the trash.

Young found a way to get the family into a hotel, not easy for a family of eight, while the crew cleared the home.

Not up to code

The Tobins’ home looks idyllic from the street. Expansive green lawn, it is the roomy family home that Tia and Sean Tobin had always wanted for their big family. The couple saved for nine years to buy this home and moved in last June. Immediately, they started having problems:septic backing up into a bath tub, the leach field is failing, the hot water heater exploded, and in March, the roofing shingles in the front
of the house landed in the front yard while her young children where playing there.

“This house has been a nightmare. The workmanship is not to code and is dangerous. Town hall has no record of work being done here because building permits have never been pulled,” said Tobin.

The Tobins have twice been denied assistance from FEMA and have exhausted all other avenues searching for flood aid.

Contractors tell them it will cost $66,000 to restore the lower level of their home, bring the plumbing and electrical up to code and installing a drainage system to prevent this from happening again.

Tobin said if they had had a sump pump in place, this disaster could have been avoided, But prior flooding had not been disclosed during the home sale and a sump pump that had been in place had been removed by the previous owner, the Tobins learned later.

“In the end, it is all material things. But for us, our home is part of our family. It is the center of our life and where we raise our children. We need to get it back to a livable condition,” said Tobin.

Making the best of it

Since the family has been denied any kind of flood aid, Young and her ministry is spearheading the demolition of the lower level and the reconstruction.

A volunteer organization, Young’s ministry needs building supplies and manpower to make this happen.

As for the family, the six children lost everything from clothes and toys to baby supplies like new high chairs that were still in boxes.

While Young’s group completes the demolition, the Tobin children are sharing their parents’ room, and the parents sleep on couches.

“This has to get better. It can’t get worse. We have dealt with enough,” said Tobin.

How to help

If you want to help the Tobin family, e-mail them directly at tobinfamily@yahoo.com or e-mail Paul Young at pyounga@gmail.com.