More than 200 mobile homes in the City of Evans have been damaged from September’s flooding and require removal, but the cash-strapped city is struggling to find the resources to foot the bill. To support the city’s efforts, Colorado U.S. Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall are calling on FEMA to use a policy for private property debris removal dating back to 2007.

Under that policy, the City of Evans may be eligible for FEMA Public Assistance to remove damaged mobile homes because the homes meet key criteria set by the FEMA policy.

The two Senators wrote a letter to FEMA today urging it to follow this policy and make public assistance available to help Evans clean up its mobile homes in the Bella Vista and Eastwood Village parks. The Senators also asked FEMA to apply the debris removal policy to other Colorado communities, such as Jamestown, Longmont, Lyons, and Milliken, which are in similar situations, should the towns make similar requests.

In a letter to FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate, the senators wrote, “The historic floods in Colorado this year resulted in the damage or destruction of over 200 mobile homes in the City of Evans.  Due to the scale of the destruction, the trailers were rendered uninhabitable and deemed a threat to public health and safety that need to be removed as debris. These trailers sit on privately owned property, and due to the extent of the flood damage, it is clear that they should qualify as debris.

“The FEMA Disaster Assistance Policy entitled “Debris Removal from Private Property” (DAP9523.13) establishes criteria to evaluate the eligibility of debris removal from private property for reimbursement.  These criteria include the elimination of immediate threats to life, public health, and safety; elimination of immediate threats of significant damage to improved public or private property; or to ensure economic recovery of the affected community.  The policy makes clear that any one of these three criteria is sufficient to obtain FEMA public assistance.  In the City of Evans, debris removal would address an immediate threat to public health and safety and would facilitate the economic recovery of the community.”

Bennet and Udall have worked closely with the Colorado Congressional delegation since the flooding began to ensure that Coloradans have every resource needed to save lives and rebuild. They helped lead a delegation-wide effort that successfully lifted the cap on the amount of emergency transportation resources Colorado could access to rebuild damaged infrastructure. The senators also led the Colorado delegation to urge the President to quickly declare an emergency when flooding began to ensure that emergency funding was available for response and recovery efforts. More recently, they voiced support for Governor Hickenlooper’s request to add additional counties to those eligible for individual and public assistance and to extend the application deadline for applying for support from FEMA.

Full Text of the Letter:

November 12, 2013

Dear Administrator Fugate:

We write to request that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) promptly approve the State of Colorado’s request for private property debris removal for the Bella Vista and Eastwood Village mobile home parks in the City of Evans.  Evans made this request, in conjunction with the state of Colorado, through the FEMA Public Assistance program.  Moving forward, we also ask you to apply FEMA’s private property debris removal policy to other similar situations in communities across Colorado that sustained heavy damage in the recent flooding.

The historic floods in Colorado this year resulted in the damage or destruction of over 200 mobile homes in the City of Evans.  Due to the scale of the destruction, the trailers were rendered uninhabitable and deemed a threat to public health and safety that need to be removed as debris. These trailers sit on privately owned property, and due to the extent of the flood damage, it is clear that they should qualify as debris.

The FEMA Disaster Assistance Policy entitled “Debris Removal from Private Property” (DAP9523.13) establishes criteria to evaluate the eligibility of debris removal from private property for reimbursement.  These criteria include the elimination of immediate threats to life, public health, and safety; elimination of immediate threats of significant damage to improved public or private property; or to ensure economic recovery of the affected community.  The policy makes clear that any one of these three criteria is sufficient to obtain FEMA public assistance.  In the city of Evans, debris removal would address an immediate threat to public health and safety and would facilitate the economic recovery of the community.

In addition to Evans, we expect that there may be similar requests from other Colorado communities involving debris removal on private property, including requests from the city of Longmont and the towns of Lyons, Milliken, and Jamestown.  All of these communities, like Evans, face enormous flood recovery costs.  We know that in all these cases, the local resources available fall far short of what is needed to cover these costs.

We therefore request that FEMA apply its private property debris removal policy in Colorado.  It  is our hope that this can be accomplished in the most expeditious manner possible.  

Thank you for your consideration.  We appreciate your ongoing efforts to help Colorado rebuild and recover from this far-reaching disaster.