Citing ‘insufficient damage,’ FEMA rejects aid claims on homes battered by tornado - Yahoo! News Someone make some sense out of this for me.
The answers seem to be contained in the article. "In fact, Stewart said he has since found out that his insurance coverage will replace his house, meaning he's ineligible for a FEMA grant anyway." "But some say FEMA is in a no-win position. After the 2004 Florida hurricanes and Hurricane Katrina, the agency came in for heavy criticism from both Congress's General Accounting Office and detractors in the press, for paying out money to people who shouldn't have qualified. "In Katrina they lost so much money because they were not careful about payout," Clare Rubin, a disaster management consultant, told the News. "The GAO hit them hard." I know when the inspector came to inspect my roof damage after Hurricane Gustav, she told me that since I was insured that the claim probably wouldn't qualify but that I should file anyway because "you never know". They ended up denying me that claim because of "insufficient damage" but offered to pay hotel room bills because of the mold in the house. Of course that was useless because there were no hotel rooms available south of Arkansas.
Perhaps the article should have been titled a little differently. The "go ahead and file anyway because you never know" statement is really telling and a prime example of the fraud that is run amok throughout so many agencies. With that said, we drove by some of the tornado damage out here the other day. Looking at a foundation and seeing people pick up the pieces of their house and pile it into a dumpster is pretty surreal. I'm talking about the house all that is left of the place you lived yesterday is now in one of those commercial extra long dumpsters for the trucks to haul off. I hope I never have to do that and I hope I never have to do see it again.
Yep.. I drove through Tuscaloosa and Birmingham a couple days after that bunch of twisters went through there. Surreal is a good word to describe it.
I drove through Mississippi a few weeks ago. About 20 miles outside of Starkville there was an area of timber about 6 miles long that the top of every tree was twisted off. As we drove up the Natchez trace we could see trees up to 3' in diameter twisted like it was nothing. It looked like a bomb hit that place.
AND this is not eve taking into account those that lost loved ones. Wow, I don't even want to imagine it. To lose a child or a spouse and on top of that see your home reduced to toothpicks. Bringing me down man, need to find a funnier topic.
