Governor Mary Fallin and state emergency management officials await word on their recent appeal filed for nine eastern Oklahoma counties hit by a winter storm and flooding after Christmas 2015. The appeal was filed with the Federal Emergency Management Agency which recently denied individual assistance for homeowners, renters and business owners affected by the storms that started Dec. 26.
The appeal covers those in Adair, Cherokee, Delaware, Mayes, McCurtain, Muskogee, Ottawa, Pushmataha and Sequoyah Counties. FEMA approved public assistance for 41 other counties in the state as well as 33 counties in Missouri and eleven in Arkansas.
“I am at a loss to explain how these neighboring states qualified for Individual Assistance while damage from the same storm in our adjacent Oklahoma counties fell short of garnering the same federal aid,” said Governor Fallin in a statement. “Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri residents sustained damage during the same period, from the same storm.”
The governor pointed out that weather systems recognize no county or state lines and Oklahomans have been left behind.
“Moreover, in all of the nine counties still desperately in need of Individual Assistance, infrastructure was damaged so badly by the storm that Public Assistance was declared. It only makes sense that the same storm that delivered an estimated $48 million in damages to roads and bridges, parks and public buildings as well as electric power systems, would similarlyl damage homes and businesses,” added the governor.
The storm was blamed for 8 deaths in Okalhkoma and the destruction of 122 homes and damage to another 118.
