Disaster Recovery Center helping flood victims
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A total of 109 people have gone to the recently created FEMA Disaster Recovery Center in Colfax looking for answers.
Located at 114 N. Walnut St., the office, which opened Saturday, is the third location FEMA has set up in Iowa since record storms and flooding began to ravage homes and businesses across several counties earlier this month.
The goal for each of the three DRC offices is to allow people face-to-face attention from FEMA officials, who can help track where each applicant is in the process of receiving aid and putting their homes, businesses and lives back together.
“You don’t have to come here, it’s not a necessity,” said FEMA Public Information Officer Don Bolger, noting that more uninsured victims of flooding have applied for aid by telephone or online. “It’s more a convenience.
“I like to call this more of a communication center more than a recovery center.”
As of Sunday night, FEMA said it had approved grants totaling more than $12 million for people in Iowa affected by the floods, almost $10 million of which had already been disbursed. In that same time frame, FEMA had received 5,742 applicants in Iowa, 366 of which have come from Jasper County.
Karalyn Schroder was one Colfax resident at the DRC on Monday. She and her family have lived on West State Street, one of the areas in Colfax hit hardest by the flooding, for the last 50 years.
Schroder said the floods left her home with about eight feet of water in the basement — dry for the first time in nearly three weeks on Sunday — and she had to go live with her granddaughter for 12 days in the country until she could return.
Like many Colfax residents, Schroder will be replacing nearly every major appliance in her home, short of a stove and oven. While she wasn’t able to get assistance in replacing food she stored in the basement and lost in the floods, Schroder said the services the DRC provided were “helpful.”
“I stopped in here because I had a couple questions that didn’t get answered in the letter FEMA sent,” she said.
Applying is the first step in the process of seeing if one is eligible for aid from FEMA. Next, a FEMA official will go to a home or business and do a 30-45 minute inspection to assess any damage. Bolger said there have yet to be any reports of FEMA officials being impersonated in door-to-door inspections, but he advised homeowners and businesses to make sure they ask for identification. Also, no FEMA official will ever charge for an inspection.
If a person’s application is approved, FEMA will then deposit money directly into the checking account of flood victims. The process usually takes one to two weeks, Bolger said.
The process of inspecting individuals’ homes as well as businesses has no current cut-off date.
“We never put an end date on it,” Bolger said. “When they say the need no longer exists, we’ll close up shop.”
Colfax Mayor Dave Mast confirmed that city officials will be meeting with FEMA for the first time today at 3 p.m. The meeting is expected to include discussions on what kind of options Colfax has regarding buy-out programs for homes and buildings that are beyond repair.
However, Mast said it is still “too early in the game” to make any determination if that is the best option.
Josh Koehn can be contacted at 792-3121 ext. 422 or via e-mail at jkoehn@newtondailynews.com.
