Colorado Flooding: Two Months Later

DENVER – In the two months since heavy rains brought flooding, Colorado survivors have received more than $117.4 million in state and federal assistance and low-interest loans and an additional $35.1 million in FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) payouts.

To date, more than $52.7 million in Individual Assistance (IA) grants has helped more than 15,000 Colorado households find safe, functional and sanitary rental units or make repairs to primary homes and cover other disaster-related expenses, such as medical needs or personal property loss. Nearly $48.7 million of IA grants have been issued in housing assistance and $4 million in other needs assistance, such as medical or personal property loss. Flood survivors have also received disaster unemployment assistance and disaster legal services.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) has approved $64.7 million in disaster loans to Colorado homeowners, renters, businesses of all sizes and private nonprofit organizations. Of that amount, $54.3 million was in loans to repair and rebuild homes and $10.4 million in business and economic injury loans. Approved loan totals in some of the impacted areas are currently $40 million in Boulder County, $8.9 million in Larimer County and $7.7 million in Weld County.

In addition:

• FEMA housing inspectors in the field have looked at more than 24,000 properties in the 11 designated counties for Individual Assistance.

• In coordination with the State and local officials, FEMA Disaster Survivor Assistance specialists have canvassed Colorado neighborhoods, helping 37,180 survivors connect with recovery services. Survivors have talked to local, state, nonprofit, nongovernmental and FEMA specialists at the Disaster Recovery Centers (DRCs). At the DRCs, in the field and on the phone, FEMA provides information in Spanish and many other languages.

• More than 50 national, state and local voluntary and faith-based organizations have spent 269,330 hours helping people as they recover from the flooding. The 27,655 volunteers are providing donations, volunteer management, home repair, child care, pet care, counseling services and removal of muck and mold from homes.

• In the 18 counties designated for Public Assistance, 190 Applicant Kickoff Meetings have been conducted and so far FEMA has obligated $9,451,743 for eligible projects for debris removal, emergency protective measures and the repair of critical public-owned infrastructure.

• FEMA and the State’s Private Sector team has contacted organization leaders from 33 Chambers of Commerce, six Economic Development Centers and 38 colleges and universities to share disaster assistance information.

• The Federal Disaster Recovery Coordination group is coordinating disaster recovery across the entire federal family of agencies, facilitating long-term relationships among agencies, identifying technical expertise and funding opportunities; suggesting strategies for addressing specific needs, and generally encouraging a whole community approach to disaster recovery.
  • Coordinating agencies represented in FDRC include U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and U.S. Department of Commerce.

• Speakers Bureau has received 71 requests from local officials throughout the affected area and 363 State/FEMA specialists and SBA representatives have spoken at town hall meetings and other venues. More than 7,600 attendees received information about FEMA’s IA program, Hazard Mitigation, flood insurance and SBA.

• Mitigation specialists have counseled 15,250 survivors during outreach efforts at area hardware stores and more than 4,300 survivors at Disaster Recovery Centers in Colorado.

• In the first 60 days of the Colorado flooding disaster, there have been 96,375 total page views on the disaster web page, fema.gov/disaster/4145, or an average of 1,606 daily. More than 500 tweets in the last 60 days were posted on the FEMA Region 8 Twitter feed, an average of eight daily tweets. The R8 Twitter feed has increased its followers to 9,000, an increase of nearly 600 new followers in the past 60 days.

• At the request of the State, the 11 counties with FEMA IA designations are Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Clear Creek, El Paso, Fremont, Jefferson, Larimer, Logan, Morgan and Weld.

• At the request of the State, the 18 counties with FEMA Public Assistance (PA) designations are Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Clear Creek, Crowley, Denver, El Paso, Fremont, Gilpin, Jefferson, Lake, Larimer, Lincoln, Logan, Morgan, Sedgwick, Washington and Weld.

County-By-County Breakdown of State and Federal Grants

Register with FEMA by phone, 800-621-3362, from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., MST, seven days a week.  Multilingual phone operators are available on the FEMA helpline. Choose Option 2 for Spanish and Option 3 for other languages. People who have a speech disability or are deaf or hard of hearing may call (TTY) 800-462-7585; users of 711 or Video Relay Service can call 800-621-3362.

Register online: DisasterAssistance.gov. Register by Web-enabled device, tablet or smartphone: type m.fema.gov in the browser.