Flood Disaster Family of 6 Home Unlivable Lost Car

Hi Family, Friends, Friends of Friends, Neighbors, and Strangers! I am Evvie Gulley and I want to THANK YOU for taking your valuable time to read our story!

Most importantly this plea for help comes out of desperation for my daughter, Layah Gulley and her four beautiful babies (four of my precious grandbabies) Isaiah (9), Isabel (6), Mia (4) and Maverick who is 15 months old! She bravely saved her kids from domestic violence a short time after moving here to Whatcom County in Washington from Albuquerque New Mexico, becoming a pregnant, 25 year old single mom of three. Living here in Sumas we are pretty much surrounded by creeks and rivers. This month these new "atmospheric rivers" have DUMPED an historic amount of rain on us. All that rain is causing ALL of the surrounding waterways to FLOOD and completely saturate the ground in pretty much our entire county! Thanksgiving weekend Whatcom County was pummelled and evacuated AGAIN when the levees failed for a second time. We can't even get back to Sumas to get our clothes and to replenish our daily living supplies because of closed roads from this latest flood. Living here for only less than two years we have never personally experienced anything like this powerful and DESTRUCTIVE force. Until now I had only seen this type of terrifying disaster on the news! 

This flooding has cost us our home, my car, our furniture, kids' toys and books, stroller, puppy toys & kennels, Layah's paychecks & SO much more! This flooding destroyed everything on the entire main floor of our small apartment with an asbestos & human waste hazard from the Sumas River & citywide septic tank overflow as well Now our apartment is being gutted and will be uninhabitable for months to eradicate that contamination hazard. 

So now we need to find and fund and qualify for another place to live.

Most of the places that take our large family and two small dogs in our county are already full so our choices are limited and costly. Until the contamination hazard & our landlord replaces our bottom level, we need a clean, warm & safe place to live. We've been told this could takes MONTHS before tenants can live on the property. 

Not many places take a family of six and two dogs in one room of a motel or anywhere really, so it has cost Layah almost $3000 so far just so we have housing . 

My car was floating and is totalled, leaving us with a $2647 balance we still have to pay!

Layah has a degree and works full time at the local hospital as a Certified Sterile Processing Technician. 

Over the past few months Layah has lost a lot of pay to take care of the kids and me as FMLA due to my disability, and now this. 

She had managed to save several thousand dollars to cover an emergency so she had but has been forced to use most of it to cover bills since losing so much pay. 

She also had previously loaned very good friends $6000 out of that savings and such a kind heart.

Layah's money is gone now as she supports me too! 

To top it all off, I was sick with Covid and the baby with RSV when this happened!

Side note: we have Renter's Insurance but it doesn't cover floods and that coverage isn't even available and I was fully vaccinated when I got sick!

Thanks again for reading this!