Jeannie Anderson sits next to sandbags that proved to be little or no protection from rushing waters.

Jeannie Anderson thought it couldn't get any worse than the rainfall in June that made her tiny frame house in White Settlement an unlikely swimming pool. Five weeks and another flood later, the water is gone, but so is the use of her bedroom, guest room, and living room.

"I was just walking around carrying stuff and crying," Anderson said of the first time the water came in. She went to sleep while it was raining and when she got up, her feet landed on water-soaked carpet. Squishing from room to room, she found the creek had invaded most of her house. By mid-morning, the waters had receded, leaving a thick layer of mud, carpets and baseboards ruined, and enough moisture trapped inside her walls to create a major mold problem. "I felt like I was stranded in my own disaster area," she said.

A Baptist men's group came by as Anderson stood in her garage crying. The volunteers shoveled out the mud and pulled up her carpet. The Red Cross stopped by with bottled water and clean-up items like rubber gloves and bleach. So far that's the only help she has received. Retired, in poor health, and living on a fixed income, Anderson was scared, depressed, and confused. "I didn't know what to do," she said.

Gov. Rick Perry declared Tarrant County a state disaster area on June 17, allowing residents like Anderson to apply for low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration to repair flood damages. But the SBA told Anderson that she was ineligible -- essentially too poor to repay even a low-interest loan designed for low-income individuals. The grants that have helped some flood-ravaged communities won't be available in White Settlement because the state isn't requesting a federal disaster declaration.

Anderson, who lives off a monthly Social Security check and a small retirement fund, is left with few options. Having had heart surgery in January and a stroke in February, she has rolled her adjustable hospital bed to the only dry spot in the house -- right in front of the television. From that spot, by phone, she is battling the city of White Settlement, Gov. Rick Perry, and even President George W. Bush for any kind of aid she can get for herself and residents like her who have been flooded and hung out to dry.

Anderson figures that, just in her modest neighborhood, parts of which date back to the 1930s, there must be close to 100 retired homeowners in similar circumstances. The June storms brought to a head the chronic flooding problem that has plagued this blue-collar Tarrant County suburb for about two decades -- floods caused in large part by upstream development in Fort Worth and creekside development in White Settlement, as well as downstream obstructions where the creek crosses the Carswell air base. This time, according to city hall reports, the overflowing waters damaged more than 250 homes, put 76 families in temporary housing, swamped city hall, left many homes and businesses beyond repair, caused extensive road damage, and completely washed out one bridge.

Until this month, White Settlement Mayor James Ouzts said, Fort Worth has never accepted any responsibility for increased flooding due to their developments. But now Ouzts has in hand a long-awaited U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study that shows Fort Worth is part of the problem -- and the larger city is beginning to change its tune.

"It looks like the Mississippi River," said Dewayn Cash, White Settlement City Council member, describing the creek a few weeks ago as the water was rising. "You actually could float a boat down it."

Mary Thomason, 59, has lived near the creek for 20 years. She was out of town when the water took over her house. Thomason applied for an SBA loan, but was denied because she is currently unemployed. "That was it," she said. "They made no suggestions other than turning my name in to the Red Cross."

According to the SBA, only 27 loans have been approved for Tarrant County flood victims, out of 147 applications. And lots of people didn't even bother applying. But despite all the damage and danger, Anderson said she expects few people to move out of her neighborhood. They can't afford to.

"Some of these older people don't have money, they don't have any place to go, and they can't get out," said Freta Powell, a 30-year resident of the city. "Every time it floods, it gets a little worse. Why do we have to wait for someone to die?"

For Anderson and the 15,000 or so people who live in White Settlement, the flooding problem begins and ends with Farmer's Branch Creek, normally a shallow cut with a trickle of water. The creek begins in Fort Worth, on the west side of Loop 820, runs through White Settlement and flows under Carswell's runways before emptying into the West Fork of the Trinity River. Anderson has lived beside it for 40 years. Until the 1990s, she said, the creek was "just a ditch" that kids could jump across, and that almost never got out of its banks. Now, however, it seems to flood at the first sign of a hard rain. Anderson said that the creek flooded her house in 1991, 1995, 2000, and 2004, getting worse each time.

What changed in the 1990s? More development in White Settlement but, even more important, the building of the Westpoint residential and commercial areas in Fort Worth, along the creek's headwaters outside Loop 820. The area is upstream of White Settlement and on a hill. Besides about 1,200 homes, the area has sprouted commercial developments and two car dealerships with vast parking lots. What had been fields where rain was filtered through soil and rock is now covered in lots of concrete that shoots the water directly into Farmer's Branch Creek. On the other side of town, where the water hits Carswell Joint Reserve Base, the creek is funneled into culverts that are no longer adequate to handle it. In effect, White Settlement has begun to look like a bathtub, with the taps open wider and wider at one end, and the drain more and more stopped up at the other. The last flood did more than $1 million damage to streets, bridges, and other infrastructure. It floated cars on top of one another and left loaded dumpsters stranded in the creekbed. In June, during day after day of torrential rain, police officers learned to close the two bridges into Anderson's neighborhood at the first raindrop. When that happens, people are stuck for hours on whichever side of the creek they chose, and emergency vehicles can't easily get into the neighborhood.

"The problem is the result of the continued growth of Fort Worth and White Settlement," Ouzts said. "The people who have lived here since the '80s say there wasn't significant flooding [then]."

Ouzts said this is the second time in four years that White Settlement has flooded and not been declared a federal disaster area. The first time was in June of 2000. Two days after the most recent flood, Ouzts requested state aid, which came in the form of SBA loans. On June 25, Gov. Perry granted additional assistance from various federal and state agencies, but that aid is mostly for rural areas.

Jimmie Badgett, regional liaison officer for the Texas Department of Public Safety's Division of Emergency Management, said the governor has done everything he can to help. A federal disaster declaration would bring grants and other much-needed aid, but Badgett explained that the threshold of damage needed to qualify for the federal declaration is based, in part, on a state's population. Less-populated states have lower damage thresholds. In this case, Texas' 22 million-plus population works against its smaller communities, a situation that Ouzts said is unfair, especially for cities like his with plenty of lower-income and fixed-income households.

White Settlement may be a little closer to getting aid from another federal source, however -- one not so much involved in recovering from natural disasters as in helping to prevent them. And, perhaps, from a previously reluctant neighbor.

After the 2000 flood, White Settlement commissioned the Corps of Engineers to study the creek. The Corps' preliminary report was ready in April -- a year late.

Ouzts said that, in the past, Fort Worth has refused to take any responsibility for the flooding in White Settlement. Now, Ouzts said, the Corps' study points to upstream development as a basic cause, backing up White Settlement's position, and Fort Worth is beginning to bend.

"We now have the study and believe development in Fort Worth is a contributing factor," Ouzts said. "We believe Fort Worth would benefit by coming to the table and discussing it."

"I certainly wouldn't say we are causing the flooding, but I would say we are contributing to it," said Robert Good, Fort Worth's director of public works. He said that Fort Worth and White Settlement need to approach the situation "as partners." The Fort Worth City Council will ultimately decide what should be done, he said. "It's everybody's problem. The question now is what are we going to do about it, and I have absolutely no idea what the right answer for that is."

Last Friday, officials and citizens from White Settlement sat down for a work session with the Corps and Fort Worth officials. A public forum involving the same parties was set for the evening of July 20. The Corps will provide half of the funding for any improvements needed on the creek, Ouzts said. "We're looking at the recommendations. My goal is to somehow try to secure funding on [White Settlement's] commitment by the end of the year. It may have to be a bond issue or something else."

One proposed solution is a $6.5 million detention pond on the Fort Worth side of 820. Another is for the city simply to buy out people like Anderson whose properties abut the creek. Channelization of the creek and additional culverts under the runway could also help, the study said.

A recent court case could have something to do with Fort Worth's increased willingness to be part of the solution. Corsicana attorney Glenn Sodd represented a group of ranchers who'd been flooded by releases from the Richland-Chambers reservoir. Sodd sued the Tarrant Regional Water District on behalf of the ranchers, and in June the Texas Supreme Court upheld a 1998 jury verdict awarding the ranchers $18.5 million; interest has raised the total to about $33 million.

"The city ought to have a conscience about taking care of these folks," Sodd said. "But unfortunately most cities are reluctant to accept responsibility for their action because they're always short on money."

The Corps also provided White Settlement with a new map of the creek's 100-year floodplain -- the area in which there is a one percent chance each year that a flood will occur. The bad, but not surprising news: Most of the town is in the floodplain.

Anderson, of course, thinks her neighborhood is in more like "a four-year floodplain." And she's just about right. The study shows that the creek channel itself and the culverts at Carswell can handle only about a five-year flood and that many crossings throughout the city would be under water in just a two-year flood.

Whatever projects the cities and the Corps undertake, they may be too little too late for people like Frederick Wolfe. His daughter, Valerie Arnett, said that her dad has lived in White Settlement for over 50 years and has endured four floods. Wolfe, a cancer survivor, lives on income from part-time work at the Kimbell Art Museum, retirement benefits from Lockheed Martin, and Social Security checks. In June, his house flooded again, and someone's van floated into his backyard. Like Anderson and the others, he was refused an SBA loan to fix up his house. "Then he asked about a grant, and they said they didn't have anything like that," Arnett said.

The only relief Wolfe found was from the Baptist Men's Group, the Red Cross, and a Chinese Buddhist group. Arnett said that her dad is so sick there was no way he could deal with the problems the flood caused.

"Every time it has happened, the city said they would do something," Arnett said. "It was like a river went through here. All the family memories are covered in mud, sewage, and filth. It's going to happen again -- it's just a matter of when."

Wolfe had flood insurance this time around, but it doesn't pay for everything. Anderson's homeowner's insurance doesn't cover flood damage, and she wants to get flood insurance as soon as possible. But she and others are caught in a soggy Catch 22.

"They won't give it to me until the house is fixed," she said. "I can't get the house fixed until I get some help."

Anderson said she has turned everywhere she can think of for help. She's called her city and state representatives, members of Congress, news outlets, and even local political parties. She believes "swing states" in the presidential campaign may be getting more help than Texas.

"I called the Republican Party, and a woman said 'There's nothing we can do; it's your own responsibility,' " Anderson said. "So I told her there may not be anything you can do, but we do have votes and we will be using them come November, and that's when she hung up."

Nonetheless, Anderson said she has received positive response from her representatives. State Sen. Jane Nelson sent a letter to President Bush and has been "outstanding," Mayor Ouzts said, and Anderson said U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, is trying to get her some medical attention.

But with each day, the flood and its damages move farther away from the minds of politicians and people not directly affected. It's July, and Anderson still hasn't received any help except from friends and family. She's still sleeping in her living room, while the mold multiplies inside her walls and her belongings mildew. She said she doesn't understand why President Bush can't or won't help.

"He's leaving his own people in Texas hanging," Anderson said. "All the money goes to Iraq and Iran, and we're sitting here in a mess."

Thomason, who lives about a block away from Anderson, agrees with her neighbor.

"I'd like for him [Bush] to come spend the week with me after the flood," Thomason said. "The next time it floods, it's an open invite -- come visit."