A resolution urging changes in federal disaster assistance regulations is circulating among Maine towns and cities hit hard by severe ice storms in late December and early January.
The initiative comes on the heels of news that a request by Gov. Paul LePage to declare the storms a natural disaster was denied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency because the agency’s winter storm guidelines do not specifically offer assistance in the aftermath of ice storms.
Without the declaration, towns and cities clobbered by back-to-back storms between Dec. 21 and Jan. 1 are on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars spent in overtime pay, salt, sand, downed power lines and damage to vehicles.
Fayette Town Manager Mark Robinson has been spearheading the resolution effort. The Kennebec County town racked up more than $40,000 in costs because of a severe ice storm that hit just before winter, he said.
“Give us 2 feet of snow any day of the week and we can handle it,” Robinson said, unlike ice storms, that rapidly eat through winter road budgets.
Differentiating between snowstorm and ice storms, “is a significant difference and that difference was not clearly identified by policymakers at FEMA,” he said.
The intent of the resolution is to show a united block of Maine communities that want to see revisions to FEMA’s guidelines to acknowledge the severe effects to public safety, finances and infrastructure ice storms can have.
So far, officials from at least 30 towns and cities in the state, including many in Androscoggin, Oxford and Franklin counties, have either signed the resolution or are expected to discuss it soon.
The FEMA guidelines were updated in 2009, but this year’s storms are the first time Maine towns have discovered the flaw.
Mechanic Falls Town Manager John Hawley led the charge in Androscoggin County. His town incurred $18,000 in costs from the ice storms, and wasn’t aware of the shift in policy that leaves taxpayers on the hook.
Though it has no legal power, the resolution sends a message to FEMA policymakers, he said.
“It’s not that we don’t disagree with the fact that (the agency) is trying to save money, it’s that it is doing it at our expense,” Hawley said.
“If we don’t sign a resolution to push back, essentially we’re just accepting it and in my opinion it just leaves the door open for them to take further things away from us in the future,” he said.
The storms, which left approximately 200,000 people without power, shuttered schools and government offices. Days of subfreezing temperatures left road crews struggling to keep major arteries open.
Paris selectmen unanimously approved and signed the two-page resolution at their meeting Monday. Town Manager Amy Bernard estimated the town spent at least $10,000 responding to the ice storms. Overall, communities in Oxford County applied for $260,000 in assistance, according to Allyson Hill, county Emergency Management Agency director.
According to Gov. LePaghe’s declaration request sent to FEMA’s regional office in Boston in late February, a preliminary application for emergency relief to the tune of $6 million was whittled down to $1.8 million, mainly because the largest expenditures, treating roads with salt and sand, were not eligible for reimbursement.
FEMA’s winter storm guidelines, known as Disaster Assistance Policy 9423.1, say a winter storm is classified as an event that includes conditions such as snow, ice, high winds and blizzard conditions, but only uses snowfall amounts to measure the severity of an event and whether affected communities are eligible for assistance.
“It essentially lumps ice storms in with snowstorms,” Maine Emergency Management spokesperson Lynette Miller said.
“They’ve added apples and oranges together, and I think the intent of the towns is to separate them because the two issues really pose different problems,” she continued.
Dennis Pinkham, spokesman for FEMA’s Boston office, said he was not in a position to speculate if FEMA policymakers intended to address the policy. Questions forwarded to the agency’s office in Washington, D.C., were not returned Wednesday afternoon.
FEMA guidelines for winter storm relief are understandably stricter in the Northeast than they are in parts of the country that are not used to severe winters, Miller said.
Omitting ice storms from the policy is a oversight that should be corrected, Miller said. Ideally, she’d like to see the policy amended to add criteria that specifically addresses ice storms.
Widespread concern that the existing policy could leave the state vulnerable in the event that a more serious storm, like the one that bludgeoned the state in 1998, are probably overblown, Miller said.
“There are some categories of disaster, like major hurricanes, where the federal government will very quickly agree that, ‘yes, this is a disaster,’ without us having to count the beans or do a lot of predisaster assessments,” she said.
“Probably a ’98 ice storm, we’d be in that kind of situation, but we don’t want to have to count on that,” Miller continued. “We would like to see the regulations adjusted so that there can be a true assessment of what the impact is.”
pmcguire@sunjournal.com
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