Those impacted by the 2016 flood in Greenbrier County received good news for the 2019 holiday season – funds from Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for property acquisitions and demolitions have been approved.
“Within the last week, we’ve received FEMA approvals for three Hazard Mitigation Acquisition/Demolition projects (FEMA buyouts),” explained Paula Brown, deputy director of Greenbrier County Homeland Security & Emergency Management Agency. “We will be completing all the required paperwork to purchase these properties in January 2020 with demolition to follow as these structures are a public safety hazard in their communities.”
The FEMA hazard mitigation program takes 15 percent of funds made available through FEMA to a state during a natural disaster and requires them to be used on preventing future damage to homes, families, infrastructure, and buildings. Through the program, homeowners had three possible options; acquisition and demolition (also known as the buyback program), elevations, and mitigation and reconstruction.
“These projects will purchase and demolish 24 properties impacted by the 2016 flood,” Brown said. “In most cases, these structures were in the floodway, which meant that they could not build back on their property.
Applicants approved for this grant are in the severely impacted areas of White Sulphur Springs, Rainelle, Rupert, Charmco, and Caldwell.”
The three projects will receive a total of $1,748,500 for Greenbrier County flood recovery:
• Acquisition and demolition of six properties totaling $507,300 (Project 4273-121).
• Acquisition and demolition of eight properties totaling $516,400 (Project 4273-118).
• Acquisition of 10 properties, each of which have already been demolished, totaling $724,800 (Project 4273-100).
In early 2019, Brown approached the Greenbrier County Commission and several news outlets, explaining that funds were being held up in an approval process by the state. Funds for the program are distributed according to a priority list, one that usually and originally favors these hardest hit homeowners. However, in late 2017, this priority listing changed, placing these families on the bottom below infrastructure and commercial projects.
“The state flipped the priorities to be used in hazard mitigation,” Brown explained in early 2019. “The priority was totally flipped to be all commercial projects, infrastructure projects, water plants, sewer plants, anything that was infrastructure for a city or a county. All the acquisitions that were going to be priorities went all the way to the bottom. So the worst people hit are now the last served.”
Brown explained county-level officials found out later, in 2018, long after the priority list had been changed. The state-level prioritization to infrastructure and commercial projects resulted in the approximate three-year wait for the flood victims’ files to reach FEMA.
The hold appeared to come to an end in August, when $16 million in infrastructure projects were canceled or failed in Greenbrier County alone, and residential projects were recommended for FEMA approval by the state.
Last week’s approval means getting significant help to those impacted by the flood. Before, approximately $469,500 for the acquisition of 11 demolished properties had been allocated to Greenbrier County; hazard mitigation funds approved for 2019 now total $2,279,600. Although this means that recovery efforts are progressing, according to Brown there are additional projects waiting for FEMA approval.
In addition to the acquisition and demolitions, the hazard mitigation program has also provided:
• Structural elevations were approved for three homes totaling $301,600.
• Mitigation and reconstructions, comprised of two residential home rebuilds, total $336,800.
• The generator program, which provided generators for safety zones in the county, received $166,240.
Between all of the projects, the total FEMA funds received, year-to-date from the flood of 2016 totals $3,084,240.
“I appreciate all the support the media has given the Greenbrier residents impacted by the flood that were languishing with no recovery since the 2016 flood, so I wanted to give you an uplifting update for the holiday season,” Brown said.
Read more in the Monday, December 30, 2019, edition of The West Virginia Daily News.
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