Posted on 06/13/2011 7:38:13 AM PDT by TSgt
Jefferson County resident Jonathan Stewart said he laughed in shock after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) claimed the house his family lost in the deadly April 27 twister was ‘not unsafe to live in’.
Displaced families in tornado-ravaged Alabama are outraged after being denied federal aide to rebuild their flattened homes – due to ‘insufficient damage’.
The devastating reality is the house is now a concrete slab surrounded by rubble.
Mr Stewart told AL.com a FEMA inspector saw first-hand the Pleasant Grove residence he shared with his wife, Lisa, and their two children was ripped from the ground. Three days after the visit, however, he received a letter reading: ‘Based on your FEMA inspection, we have determined that the disaster has not caused your home to be unsafe to live in.
‘Although the disaster may have caused some minor damage it is reasonable to expect you or your landlord to make these repairs. At this time you are not eligible for FEMA housing assistance.’
Mr Stewart told the website: ‘Lisa and I looked at the letter and laughed.’ While he has since found out his insurance coverage will replace his house, the family is not alone.
Lashunta Tabb’s home 15 miles away in North Smithfield Manor was stripped of its siding, and more than half of her roof blew off with tornado-force winds.
She too, received a letter claiming there was ‘insufficient damage’ – the number one reason in Alabama the people are determined ineligible for FEMA grants, worth up to $30,200.
It is not yet known how many Alabama tornado victims received the letter.
FEMA deputy branch director for individual assistance Lynda Lowe said finding of insifficient damage are often correct, and many of those who filed for assistance did not have damage.
FEMA officials encourage whose who believe they were wrongly declared ineligible to file for an appeal through local disaster recovery centres.
Spokesman Renee Bafalis said: ‘If you have a question why you received a determination of ineligibility, go in there and let them look it up and help you file an appeal.’
A report issued on Wednesday, however, revealed few disaster victims follow through.
It showed less than one percent of the 25,081 applicants initially declared ineligible for any reason had appealed, leaving the potential for millions of dollars in federal aide to go unclaimed.
An applicant has 60 days from the date of the determination letter to appeal.
It was not known at press time how many applicants were declared ineligible in Alabama due to insufficient damage. However, similar findings have occurred after nearly every recent disaster.
THE BUREAUCRACY BEHIND APPLYING FOR FEMA AIDE:
When a disaster victim applies for a FEMA grant, an inspector is dispatched to the applicant’s property.
Inspectors carry laptops connected to a database called NEMIS (National Emergency Management Information System), which guides them through measuring rooms and assessing damage.
Items marked for repair or replacement are priced depending on the geographic region.
Letters are issued based on the computerised report, telling an applicant whether he qualifies for FEMA assistance.
An applicant has 60 days from the date of the determination letter to appeal.
What qualifies as ‘insufficient damage’ remains unclear.
A pending lawsuit accusing FEMA of improperly denying thousands of farm workers in Texas money to repair their homes after Hurricane Dolly struck in 2008 based on the insufficient damage finding claims that FEMA used a concept called ‘deferred maintenance’ to back the rejections.
Deferred maintenance is not referenced in any regulation, Jerry Wesevich, an attorney with Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid who represents the plaintiffs, told AL.com.
Mr Wesevich described deferred maintenance as a ‘shorthand term that FEMA uses when it determines somehow that a condition of a home prior to the disaster caused the damage after the storm’.
An Alabama inspectors’ coordinator for FEMA said deferred maintenance is no longer used in assessing damage, although there is a place for inspectors to note ‘pre-existing’ conditions.
i don’t really care. There is an appeals process to follow, so it’s not a permanent rejection. They say less than 1% appeal — which means 99% of the people seem to find a way to survive without taking my tax money.
In this case, the family has insurance, and the insurance will pay. Which every family should have. If my house got blown away by a tornado, my insurance would pay, I wouldn’t expect taxpayers to give me money.
Anybody who expects government to get anything right the first time gets what they deserve.
I suppose I wasn’t thinking “elderly” enough, I’ll be 66 on the 29th of this month, if I make it and just couldn’t think of a situation where someone would not have insurance on a paid for house. Now I’m convinced that it does happen. Sad,
My mom is 90 and I know that she keeps up with the house insurance, actually my mom pays it but I have a sister near to where she lives and sis makes sure that mom pays her bills.
I’ll digress a bit here. Mom in the past switched back and forth between internet providers and cable/dish providers, cell service, etc. and was surprised to the point that she wouldn’t pay off the contracts that she had signed. Not even realizing that there was a penalty for stopping service too soon. She would get the bargain rate for 3 months or whatever and then drop them as soon as she got the bill for the regular rate. My sister finally got that mess straightened out and tries to watch her more closely now, which is a job in itself because mom is independent minded and thinks she can take care of her own affairs quite well, thank you.
Just like being able to make house payments without suffering, there are lots of people who really should not be trying to be homeowners.
Very doubtful the folks in the report have paid off their home mortgage. We did several years ago and it would be doubly stupid to not keep up the insurance.
Expecting the government (fellow citizens) to pick up the cost because they wanted to buy a big screen and run down to Disney twice a year, is SOCIALIST and is not what either made Ameria great nor is the type that is going to save America.
FEMA may be necessary in actual national disasters to re-establish essential services, but if someone fails to have home insurance or insists on living in a flood plain without flood insurance, they do so at their own peril.
Well we had fires in Texas and lost thousands of acres equal to the size of Rhode Island and some other state in the NE, I don’t remember the state they mentioned on the news... and We Texans asked for fed gov help
and Obama just said NO NO NO
I hope we don’t have a hurricane until Obama is OUT of office. We have flood, home, and Texas wind storm hail
costs me THOUSANDS of dollars
but I do not trust Obama at all
He will deny us any coverage if we have a bad storm this year
He already denied us fire damage help, which we pay for with our tax dollars
I wish Texas could seceed!
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110607/ts_csm/388790
Those floods were horrible, and they were caused by manipulation of damns and levees along the rivers.
So FEMA denied their flood claims
Said NOT NATURAL FLOODS Same as in Joplin after tornadoes
Same as in Texas after the fires
Obama only cares about BLUE STATES.
And, yet we still hear about Bush's FEMA during NO/Kartrina being a bad example.
You are quite obviously right.
If somehow nobama gets re-elected, we who opposed them will have hell to pay and it won’t just be FEMA.
Yes, there is a thing called insurance. Home,car, health, disability, general libility. I pay for all of these. Why not you too.
I do pay them, that was kinda my point
FEMA exists to make sure that in the event of an emergency your Congressional sh*tstain will have a nice safe secure doomsday bunker to hide in while you & your loved ones die a horrible death .
These doomsday bunkers are paid for by you & me with our tax dollars but you are expendable govt. sh*tstains however are not .
Amen! You are RIGHT!
My parents bought first house for $2000 in 1940s. They bought second house in 1950s for $6000. It is worth $100K now. They bought third house in 1967 for $19,500. It is worth over $100K now. And that is just resale value. It can cost much more than that to rebuild at today’s costs. Building costs are higher than many home values right now. Prices here are down to 1997 values. Great time to buy if you can pay cash or get a good loan! But terrible time to retire and sell! Lucky for us our home was never part of our retirement plan, never planned to sell it. But if we did decide to move closer to the kids we might want to sell this house. Of course we would be paying less to buy a house if we move someplace else. I guess that counts.
I have had experience with homeowners claims after a tornado - they paid promptly and without question, however, it is my understanding that after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Ike, there were many folks who were kept waiting while entities fought over wind or water damage claims. I was stunned to learn that some hadn’t been paid after more than a year. It does make FEMA a little more valuable if you are completely wiped out, no where to go and no insurance payout in the foreseeable future.
The scope of the disaster comes into play. With large hurricanes the insurance companies did not have the funds to pay all the claims. So they started delaying and rejecting claims.
Perhaps they are doing that with the massive floods and tornado storms.
Could be - I haven’t read as much about the Joplin tornado as some. It is so heartbreaking - I hope they don’t have to wait long for their payouts.
When FEMA showed up here in town after Hurricane Ike, Sept 13, 2008, many people said GO HOME WE DON’T NEED YOU! They really didn’t seem to have a clue what to do! Our mayor and city employees and cops did a GREAT JOB! But then we are Texans! Proud and free!
A California teacher friend of mine is in CTA - branch of SEIU. She believes all the lies that CTA tells her. She said if the schools, firemen, cops, don’t get (billions that could be cut from some program, I don’t remember what it is called) that soon there will be no firemen, no cops, no public schools.
I should have told her, well a lot of people here do Home Schooling, or send kids to private school. Our fire department is Volunteer Fire Dept. And we all have guns. So maybe that would be a perfect world without all the government “help” LOL
After Hurricane Ike, as I said our house was fine. But we lost food in the freezers and the refrigerators. We lost enough of the old wooden fence that we decided to put in a new fence. I turned in a $10K claim. I got $1500. My deducteble is about 10%, so you have to lose a roof to cash in. Our roof was fine, didn’t lose even a shingle. Our neighbors lost roof, just shingles but still you must fix it to keep rain out, lost fence, lost screen pool enclosure. Insurance paid for some of their repairs. I liked the old way they did home insurance. It was all just State Farm and deduc was $1500. Now we have FEMA flood, Texas Wind Storm Hail, and State Farm home insurance. It is expensive and the only one reliable to pay a claim is State Farm. There are still many lawsuits running against TX Wind Storm Hail. The lawyers are making a mint on it all.
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