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City and County not involved with individual FEMA assistance

February 11, 2009|CHARLIE COX

According to Helen Palmer, Secretary to the Boyle County Office of Emergency Management, there's a yellow, standard-sized note pad in her desk. She says the entire first page consists of logged calls from Boyle County residents requesting reimbursement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and those seeking information on how said reimbursements can be obtained.

But individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency is a service entirely independent of city and county reimbursement.

"There seems to be a lot of confusion out there about what's actually going on," said Palmer. Boyle County Emergency Management Director Lennie Shepperson couldn't agree more.

Shepperson said over the past week alone, he's received more than 35 calls from Boyle County residents asking for reimbursement for personal losses. And Shepperson said the requests have been wide-ranging in need.

"I've had calls from people wanting reimbursement or replacement for their generators and people wanting FEMA to replace their weather heads on their houses," said Shepperson.

According to Shepperson, getting reimbursement for loss from FEMA is much more complicated than collecting receipts, and the director said destruction to a home or small business must be near-total.

"To get reimbursement and individual assistance from FEMA," said Shepperson, "a house has to be severely damaged to the point that it's almost unlivable," said Shepperson. "That may have been the case with the floods (in Perryville several years ago), but I'm not sure it's an option from the ice storm."

Shepperson said residents should likely forget about any minor costs or losses during the ice storm fall out.

"I guess it's just part of being prepared (for a disaster situation.) Really, any small loss is a resident's own," Shepperson said.

Currently, the main focus of FEMA in dealing with the area, is government reimbursement for situations and services like debris removal. To Shepperson's knowledge, any possible claims for personal property loss reimbursement from the county have not begun to be taken by the agency.

Shepperson said it's really a situation of sitting and waiting right now.

"It's not absolutely out of the question FEMA will offer some individual assistance in the area, but they will likely notify us if that happens."

In any case, the county and city governments are not responsible for requests for individual assistance from FEMA, whether it's offered to some residents or not.

The typical process by which individual assistance is given, must be conducted through either the official FEMA Web site or a telephone number.

To contact FEMA directly, call 1-800-621-3362, or log onto www.fema.gov.

The city and the county ask residents not to involve them in individual assistance claims.

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