CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – Recovering from Hurricane Florence is taking a long time for residents of a neighborhood that saw some of the storm’s worst flooding.

Bob Joncas’s house was surrounded by about seven feet of water from the Waccamaw River after Florence. News13 rode along in his boat around the South Ferry neighborhood near Pitch Landing to see the flooding there in September.

Eight months after that water receded, Joncas says he can finally move back in his home this weekend.

“Go to work all day, come home, work on this until 10 or 11 o’clock at night,” said Joncas about the rebuilding process. “Then, get up and do it again the next day.”

The electrician has lived in his camper since Florence and the inside of his home looks almost brand new.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to have the flood insurance, the capability and the friends to get it done,” he said.

Joncas’s baby grand piano left in his house is playing sweet music again.

“This piano here survived two house fires,” said Joncas. “It survived Matthew and it actually survived this flood, even though it was in water for two weeks.”

Like his piano, Joncas is lucky to almost completely recover, but he says the work is far from over for his neighbors.

“They didn’t have insurance or they didn’t have enough insurance to cover what they were doing, so they haven’t even started,” he said. “Some people have just given up and put their houses up for sale.”

Joncas says he’s staying in South Ferry and isn’t afraid of another major flood. He also says he’s helping work on some of the homes in South Ferry.

As some neighbors put their houses on stilts, Joncas says not everyone in his neighborhood has that choice.

“The flood maps will not allow us to lift them and get assistance because we’re still in compliance,” he said.

Joncas says he’s planning to put his home on stilts this summer, even though his flood insurance won’t pay for it. He also says people have only moved back into a handful of the 18 homes in South Ferry so far.

News13 will have a half-hour special called Hurricane Season 2019: Learning From Florence, streaming live on WBTW.com at 7 p.m. on Thursday, June 27, and airing on TV at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 29.