Small Town Emergency Officials Question FEMA Allocations

Just as cleanup is about to get underway in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a new report is suggesting that rural areas may not be getting the help they need from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to clean up from natural disasters.

The Associated Press’ Mary Clare Jalonick is reporting that “state and local emergency officials in rural areas are increasingly frustrated that their towns are often deemed less needy than larger areas.” Jalonick points out that FEMA regulations say damages should reach more than $1 million for the government to provide public assistance, something that doesn’t always occur in sparsely populated areas.

Jalonick says Jim Anderson, a disaster recovery manager with Montana Disaster and Emergency Services, is lobbying for legislation that would create an advocate at the agency for rural areas. The legislation “would also force FEMA to conduct a study detailing the extent to which disaster declaration regulations ‘meet the particular needs’ of states with a population of less than 1 million,” Jalonick says.

However, FEMA spokesperson Natalie Rule told Jalonick that the thresholds are merely guidelines, and the agency also looks at the concentration of damage, the number of uninsured people affected, local disaster history and the extent to which state and local mitigation efforts were effective in reducing the damage.

“The regulations are always followed, and every disaster is different,” Rule told Jalonick. “We come in as supplemental aid, so there has to be an exhaustion of state and local resources.”

To read the full article, click here: http://www.helenair.com/articles/2005/08/23/montana/a09082305_02.txt