I want to give you an update on the August 18th flood damage evaluation and where we are in the disaster declaration process.

There is still a long way to go before any sort of reimbursement could possibly happen, and a lot of things have to fall into place just right. There are a lot of acronyms for the federal and business programs when it comes to disaster response so, please refer back to the next paragraph if needed when reading through this update.

The state requested a Joint Preliminary Damage Assessment (PDA) for two separate Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) programs, Individual Assessment (IA) and Public Assistance (PA). There’s also the Small Business Association’s (SBA) low-interest loan program. The State Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (DEMHS) is coordinating these efforts.

The IA evaluation, what took place in Monroe and other impacted municipalities in Fairfield, Litchfield and New Haven Counties, has wrapped up. Based on this evaluation, FEMA must determine if a declaration is justified. Connecticut made a formal request for a declaration this week. That request must still go through federal reviews before reaching the President for signature.

The SBA was part of this evaluation and visited businesses to see what meets their own program requirements. The SBA program is available for both businesses and homeowners, and provides low interest, long term loans, for which no payment is required for the first year.

IA is not the FEMA program that requires a hard number to meet the threshold of damage. Instead, several factors are looked at, including if there’s a substantial number of homes that fall under FEMA’s definition of destroyed or major structural damage to a primary residence.

The data from the PDA is still required to be added to that request.

If Connecticut gets IA, the next step is for DEMHS to help FEMA and SBA establish Disaster Recovery Centers and Business Resource Centers.

The PA evaluation started Monday, September 9. This is the FEMA program with threshold requirements, things like government infrastructure and certain cost impacts. This program has a lot of caveats such as roads or bridges can’t be Federal Aid (FHWA) roads, which many state routes are. Each impacted county must reach its threshold (Fairfield County – $4,404,127) to have the dollar amount go toward the overall state indicator (CT – $6,634,936).

Both county and state indicators must be met for the state to try to secure a disaster declaration under the PA program.

The PA PDA must be completed before the state can formally move forward.

IF the indicators for the programs are met, it still can take several weeks to get the Major Disaster Declaration.

The FEMA assessment so far found that 19 homes, an unprecedented number for Connecticut, were destroyed in the storm. 170 homes suffered major damage and 133 are inaccessible. Under FEMA guidelines, 615 homes sustained minor damage and another 1,049 were affected. The SBA assessment determined 77 business suffered major damage and 15 received minor damages.

If you haven’t already, please report damage and egress issues to the town and fill out the state DEMHS assessment list. No matter how small you think the damage is, every bit helps to get the County to the required threshold.