The Marshall County Emergency Management Agency has had $246,000 in grant funding requests denied by the Indiana Department of Homeland Security.
Director Clyde Avery told the county commissioners Monday that available funding has dwindled over the past few years. “I was afraid of this when we asked for the amount that we did, and we couldn’t really tie it back to a community project,” he said. “And so that was the two things that they noted when I asked for a response on why they were denied.”
Marshall County applied for two competitive grants from the Emergency Management Performance Grant program, as well as a State Homeland Security Program grant. Going forward, Avery says Marshall County will have to figure out how to make use of smaller amounts of grant funding. “That’s something that we have to decide as a county, once we complete the Threat Hazard Identification Risk Assessment is what are our needs,” he said. “What equipment do we need, what training do we need in order to be able to deal with those types of events, should they happen here?”
During his quarterly report to the county commissioners Monday, Avery added that the county also failed to receive disaster assistance for flash flooding that took place in the LaPaz and Plymouth areas on September 9 and 10. “That was kind of a sad situation,” he said. “We didn’t have enough damage between St. Joe and Marshall County, which were really the two counties that were impacted by that flash-flooding event, in order to qualify for a federal declaration. I was hoping to get some state assistance but we didn’t qualify for that either, because we didn’t have enough homes damaged.”
Part of the challenge was that the assessments look at destruction to primary living spaces, not just damage. Since most of the flooding damage occurred in basements, Marshall County was determined not to be eligible. Avery added that some Marshall County residents were eligible to apply for disaster loans from the Small Business Administration, but to his knowledge, none of them actually got one. “There were a lot of unmet needs,” he said. “There were a lot of folks that had damage and, obviously, because it was flooding, most of them didn’t have flood insurance, and regular homeowners’ insurance doesn’t cover flood damage. A lot of people weren’t aware of that until this happened to them.”
At the same time, the Marshall County EMA Department has received just over $21,000 in 2015 salary reimbursements, as part of the Emergency Management Performance Grant program. The county has also qualified to receive the 50-percent salary reimbursement grant again, for this year’s salaries.
