U.S. small business chief tours tornado damaged Benton County

Steve Womack, the former Rogers mayor turned congressman, introduced Isabel Guzman, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, to a Thursday roundtable of Rogers business owners.

• Exposed studs and missing ceiling tiles in the meeting room at the Rogers-Lowell Chamber of Commerce still show damage from the May 26 storms that killed three people and damaged much of downtown and other parts of Benton County.

State of play: Guzman was in NWA to review the damage and see the SBA's disaster-assistance program in action.

• She and Womack heard directly from 10 business owners impacted by the storm before they were briefed by field administrators from the SBA's disaster-assistance team and FEMA on efforts to help victims.

Driving the news: Entrepreneurs described their predicament of reconstructing buildings they own or waiting for landlords to decide their next move. In the meantime, most are earning little to nothing.

• Affected business owners can apply for economic-injury loans that cover revenue lost while business is disrupted, Guzman said.
• Those are different from — and sometimes in addition to — physical-disaster loans that also help with rebuilding.

What they're saying: Disaster victims everywhere are dealing with inflation, workforce challenges and the rising costs of rebuilding, Guzman said.

• "We're really trying to … support those small businesses, and that's why FEMA, SBA, HUD … the whole federal government comes into play when these disasters happen under the guidance of FEMA," she said.

By the numbers: FEMA has supplied about $5.7 million in assistance to storm victims.

• The SBA has approved 156 loans valued at $12.9 million.
• Not everyone gets a loan — the approval rate is about 60%, Guzman said.

Between the lines: Disasters requiring SBA action occurred about once every four months in the 1980s, Guzman said. Now, there's one about every three weeks.

• The agency has invested in technology to streamline the loan process and simplify paperwork, reducing approval times to about 12 days on average, down from nearly 100 days.

The bottom line: The SBA deadline for seeking physical-disaster, homeowners or renters loans has been extended to Aug. 28.

• Economic-injury loan apps will be accepted until early March.