FEMA: Yutu assistance could go over $100M

U.S. Indo-Pacific Command commander Lt. Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, left, listens to the briefing made by Federal Emergency Management Agency Region IX administrator Robert J. Fenton Jr. during his visit to Saipan to assess the ongoing recovery efforts from Super Typhoon Yutu. (Contributed Photo)

Recovery assistance provided by federal agencies involved in the ongoing Super Typhoon Yutu recovery efforts could go way beyond the $100-million mark with hardening the local infrastructure and building typhoon-resilient homes also being planned to be funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

FEMA had already disbursed over $21 million for homeowners and individuals that were qualified to avail of their assistance or a total of 9,331 that registered on their website. The money was used for rental assistance and other needs for homeowners.

The U.S. Small Business Administration, which offers low-interest loans, had already approved over $70 million in loans—both for homes and business economic disaster injury loans. Most of the loans were provided to business and home owners, and renters that were severely impacted after Super Typhoon Yutu barreled through Saipan and Tinian in October.

Typhoon Mangkhut was also part of the SBA’s loan program for the island of Rota where they had approved 56 home and business loans as of the last numbers they provided early this month.

FEMA Region IX administrator Robert J. Fenton Jr. said more federal dollars are expected to pour in to the CNMI as they plan to build typhoon-resilient structures that could minimize the damage in an event another mega storm passes through the Commonwealth.

He also assured that disaster assistance programs in the CNMI are not affected by the ongoing federal government shutdown in Washington, D.C. since disaster relief funds are different appropriation. Majority of FEMA personnel in the Commonwealth are also getting paid.

Fenton, in an interview yesterday, said they are looking to assist disaster survivors that suffered major damage in their homes in either repairing or rebuilding their houses from the ground up. “And we see potentially that there’s about 500 people that fall into those categories from Yutu.”

Those who are qualified to avail of the program are U.S. citizens who are home owners and not renters, their house suffered major damage, they are uninsured, and should establish that they own the property or are living in it.

Fenton said they had already communicated with some of the qualified individuals to explain to the program. “We are reaching out to them, one-on-one in order to understand their interest. If we move forward with the program, we would hire the contractors that would permanently repair their house or we would rebuild it.”

He added that Gov. Ralph DLG Torres and Lt. Gov. Arnold I. Palacios, in their respective inaugural addresses, said that there’s a need for resiliency and the need to look into the future on how structures in the CNMI are built.

“The key thing here is to tighten some of the building codes. You see that in Guam where they adopted recent international building codes. So, I think the CNMI should do the same thing. If we have an event like this in the future we won’t have this much damage. Adopting those codes will be important. One thing that we bring now is the funding to help people rebuild and repair,” said Fenton.

“Bring additional money through mitigation funds, and so we will be using that to help CNMI become resilient. There are a lot of areas where we wanted to build resiliency. What should be done is assess what they did in Guam, see what they use here, and have a discussion. Get engineers, architects, and local officials together, and talk about resources available. From there make the best decision that fits.”

Fenton said the building codes used in Guam should be used as a starting point. “Then refine it on what best suits the geography and conditions here. So, there may be some modifications here. For engineers and architects locally to have input as well, and then have some outside support. I think you look at other Pacific jurisdictions and see what works there.”

Guam is a good example that we’ve seen that go through the same but suffer little damage to their residential areas. We must do something to improve that. Hardening the residential houses would decrease the need for sheltering during storms. How do we become smarter and better prepared in case of another event like this? We need to do is invest in resiliency and hardening.”

Government structures are also part of FEMA’s typhoon-resiliency program with already 24 government entities identified as eligible applicants to avail of the said program.