Some delays are better than others.
Last week, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) was granted an extension on its planned appeal of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) assessment that denied financial support for people who lost private property during the Feb. 23 tornado in Columbus.
MEMA announced the FEMA ruling on April 26, stating it would appeal.
Appeals to rulings must come within 30 days, which would have been Sunday.
“We have filed and been granted at extension,” MEMA Public Information Officer T.J. Werre said Friday. “We are still collecting information and felt the extension was necessary.”
Werre said MEMA officials have been working on the appeal since shortly after the April 26 announcement.
“We have our coordinator and emergency managers assessing the damage,” he said. “We’ll also be using information provided by local emergency management.”
Much of local information is coming from the office of Lowndes County Tax Assessor Greg Andrews, who was approached by Lowndes County Emergency Management Director Cindy Lawrence to compile a thorough survey of property damage.
Andrews said Thursday that the exhaustive work — assessing some 1,600 parcels in the storm’s path — should be completed this week.
“About two weeks after the storm, I flew the storm area,” Andrews said. “We came up with 1,624 parcels affected in some way, some in a very minor way, some in large ways. Then we went back to our office and looked up the value of those parcels before the storm, which turned out to be $201 million in true value for tax purposes.”
Andrews said his office then visited each parcel to determine the amount of damage.
“What we are about to finish has been an ordeal,” Andrews said. “We had to go to each property and make a determination: Is the property 5 percent damaged? 60 percent? 100 percent? We made a call on each one.”
For example, Andrews said a property with a $50,000 tax value with 50 percent damage would be considered a $25,000 loss.
“It’s hard to say what the number will be when we add it all up,” Andrews said. “We’ll be done (this) week, hopefully. Then we’ll know what the total number will be.”
A FEMA official contacted Friday would not talk specifically about its determination on the Columbus tornado, instead referring to FEMA policy for insight into how agency decides on financial support for private property losses.
In the section of the policy that lists factors FEMA uses in making that ruling, there are five factors it considers: Insurance coverage in the affected area, concentration of damage, trauma (large numbers of deaths/injuries and major and sustained loss of services), special populations (low-income earner, unemployed, elderly) and volunteer agency assistance.
Two of the factors seem to make Columbus suitable for aid — concentration (the storm damage was concentrated in a distinct part of the city) and special populations (the storm ravaged some of the poorest neighborhoods).
The insurance factor may work against Columbus, however.
Under the policy, FEMA assistance for private property is confined to costs not covered by insurance and can be provided only for primary places of residence. Rentals or second homes are not eligible for FEMA funding.
Lawrence did not return calls Friday, but in a previous interview noted that the area affected by the tornado included many rental properties.
“A lot of them don’t have (homeowners) insurance,” Lawrence said then. “A lot of landlords don’t have insurance, either. This is very disappointing news.”
Werre said MEMA will continue to build the case for its appeal, but cautioned residents that the process won’t be a quick one.
“I wish I could say it would move quickly,” Were said. “But it is a process. It has to move up the chain and that is going to take a while. The only thing I can say, really, is people are going to have to be patient. We won’t get a definitive answer on this anytime soon.”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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