RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) – In May 2015, Leroy Broken Nose’s childhood home on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was pummeled by hail the size of tennis balls.

The same storm caused extensive flooding and destroyed hundreds of homes on the reservation, the Rapid City Journal reported. President Barack Obama declared it a national disaster on Aug. 7, 2015, marking the first and only time a sovereign Native American tribe independently requested and received a formal disaster declaration from a president.

In the weeks that followed the storms, Broken Nose’s battered roof leaked and rotted out, collapsing in certain sections.

Although it took almost 11 months, the 62-year-old disabled man now has a new home on a small plot of land south of Oglala Lake.

“It was a long waiting game,” Broken Nose said Wednesday while sitting at his new kitchen table. “But it’s here, so I’m happy.”

Broken Nose’s new roof was provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has spent more than a year repairing and replacing households damaged during a series of storms in May 2015.

As FEMA finalizes that work, a larger undertaking by multiple federal agencies lies ahead: to continue improving the overall conditions on the reservation.

Since December, FEMA has installed 196 manufactured housing units like the one Broken Nose now occupies. The last was installed on July 11. FEMA has also repaired an additional 107 homes, and another 13 are scheduled to be repaired before FEMA closes its eight disaster recovery centers scattered across the reservation in mid-September. All of the repairs and replacements were provided for free by FEMA, or contractors hired by the agency.

Having spent more than a year away from his wife, FEMA coordinating officer Gary Stanley is ready to return to his own home, but he harbors no illusions that the work on Pine Ridge is finished.

“What we did here in terms of disaster response is a very small part of what the need is on the reservation,” Stanley said.

According to Stanley, FEMA determined there is a shortage of at least 4,000 livable homes on the reservation. “It was imperative that we come up with a solution because it’s impacting a lot of young children and the elderly,” he said.

The people impacted include Broken Nose, who suffered a stroke in 2004 and has been battling cancer and diabetes for many years.

“I beat one cancer,” Broken Nose said, “but I can’t beat leukemia.”

Broken Nose goes to Rapid City once a month for cancer treatment, but doesn’t have a car so he takes a bus to the hospital. He gets a ride from his neighbors to Oglala, where the bus picks him up. It won’t make the drive to his home several miles south of town, he said, partially because the dirt road to his doorstep turns into an impassable trench of mud when it rains.

This is but one small example of how seriously the reservation’s road system is in need of upgrades. FEMA’s workers discovered this first-hand while trying to find certain homes, many of which are remote, like Broken Nose’s. Often, they don’t have recorded addresses and are accessible only by barely maintained, dirt roads that haven’t been inventoried.

FEMA may be leaving next month, but a disaster recovery team will stay behind to continue working with the tribe on various initiatives, with roads and housing designated as the primary focus areas. A FEMA coordinator – operating out of the Region 8 office in Denver – will be joined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Agriculture Rural Development, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and the Federal Highway Administration, according to a FEMA press release.

Some progress has already been made under FEMA’s direction, with more than 460 miles of tribal roads assessed and inventoried. The results will be entered into a Geospatial Information System map. Similar efforts are also underway to better catalog the true extent of the housing needs on the reservation.

Broken Nose’s original home was torn down after the storm, and he now lives in a manufactured housing unit provided by FEMA. It has a handicapped accessible ramp, three bedrooms, air conditioning, and is furnished with a couch, bed, and full array of standard kitchen appliances.

While it serves his needs well, Broken Nose worries the housing unit’s energy costs will be too high. He hasn’t received his first bill, but people living in other FEMA-provided units have complained of high electricity bills.

FEMA has heard these concerns as well, and as a result created a program to reduce energy expenses by teaching low-cost weatherization techniques. Other efforts are also underway to educate tribal officials on strategic planning and grant application processes for future infrastructure improvement initiatives.

“There’s a lot of need on Pine Ridge right now,” Stanley said. “I would like to think part of what we did was help focus folks on what those needs are.”

According to Stanley, the housing units are designed to last at least 20 years, provided they are well-maintained.

Broken Nose hopes his new home will be around for his grandson to live in someday, but he has already seen evidence that it might not.

Even though it’s new, Broken Nose said, some of the siding has already begun to break off and blow away.

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Information from: Rapid City Journal, http://www.rapidcityjournal.com