As the Federal Emergency Management Agency continues to gather critical data about the May 16 tornado, Missouri’s federal lawmakers say they’ll push to get a major disaster declaration approved swiftly after it's sent to President Donald Trump.
Gov. Mike Kehoe announced on Thursday that FEMA wrapped up its preliminary damage assessment for residential buildings. Kehoe said FEMA officials will be in St. Louis and St. Louis County next week to assess damage to public buildings, bridges and other infrastructure.
“The joint preliminary damage assessment teams that reviewed the damage to homes and personal property this week worked extremely efficiently to document the destruction that we are confident will lead to a federal Major Disaster Declaration to assist individuals and families,” Kehoe said in a statement. “Now, we will be jointly cataloguing the same type of evidence to support a potential request to FEMA for necessary funding to rebuild and restore the infrastructure our citizens rely on.”
Once FEMA officials are finished gathering data, Kehoe can submit a major disaster declaration request to Trump so that the state can tap into FEMA’s individual and public assistance programs. It could also unlock the Small Business Administration’s disaster loan program. Individual assistance can go to help residents affected by the tornado pay for housing, transportation or health care needs. Public assistance can go toward local or state governmental costs.
St. Louis Mayor Cara Spencer said Friday that getting the public assistance approved will be vital for tornado recovery efforts. That money can go toward expenses such as repairing public buildings and city workers’ overtime.
“It's going to be critical to get us back to where we were,” Spencer said.
It typically takes a few weeks between when a disaster occurs and when the president approves a major disaster declaration. For instance, Trump approved Kehoe’s major disaster requests Friday for storms that hit Missouri in March and April.
But both Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri, and Rep. Wesley Bell, D-St. Louis County, said Friday they’re going to push Trump to approve Kehoe’s request as quickly as possible.
Schmitt added the fact that Trump approved Kehoe’s requests for the March and April storms bodes well for the request he’ll submit for the May 16 tornado. And he said that FEMA getting the individual property damage assessments done is also a good sign.
“FEMA moved, by FEMA standards, incredibly quickly,” Schmitt said. “If you would have asked me a week ago, when we were here on Saturday, whether or not that would be done by Friday, I probably would have hedged a little bit on that. But they are done. That's a good thing.”
Bell said the Missouri delegation is united in getting the disaster request approved quickly, since the need for aid is massive throughout the St. Louis region.
“We're not going to sit and rest on our laurels either,” Bell said. “We're going to keep pushing. Because we just left some folks who are homeless as a result of this storm, and they're in tents. And so we don't have time to waste. We want to make certain that we get every resource and bring every resource that we can to bear as quickly as we possibly can.”
Pool openings delayed
During the tornado recovery update briefing, Spencer said the city would hold off on opening its public pools for two weeks.
While Spencer said those pools usually open around Memorial Day, the delay is “out of respect for the enormous amount of work that our parks and our city workers are doing to help this cleanup.”
“I want to make sure that we are focused on recovery efforts,” Spencer said.
Time off for city workers
Some city employees who have been working overtime since the tornado will get time off on Sunday and Monday, Spencer said.
“These folks have been working overtime for the last seven days. They'll continue to work tomorrow, but we are going to give folks a little bit of a rest over the weekend,” Spencer said Friday. “However, we do have a ton of staff coming in for overtime tomorrow. So it's been an unbelievable and incredible amount of outpouring of volunteers.
“I encourage you all who are volunteering to please take a break as well,” she added. “You have to recharge. This is going to be a very long haul, and we are going to need you for a long time to come.”
Ameren making headway on power outages
Officials with Ameren say they now have 3,400 customers without power, which is down from around 9,000 on Thursday.
Nearly 115,000 customers lost power a week ago when the tornado cut through St. Louis County and St. Louis.
Darnell Sanders of Ameren said that once power is restored, the utility company will step back to let communications and debris removal companies repair damage from the storm.
“And so some of the delay in getting debris cleaned up is because of coordination,” Sanders said. “They've been waiting for us to take a step back so they can get in. And so it may not seem like it's going as fast as it possibly can. But believe me, this has been a tremendous effort by all parties to make this happen. And everybody's been kind of waiting their turn to get in so that we're not interfering or impeding one another. So we ask that the community continue to be patient with all groups, because there is a method to the madness.”
