FEMA centers open as property damage assessments wrap

WASHINGTON COUNTY, Tenn. (WJHL) — Washington County Property Assessor Robbie McGuire stretched his hand as high as possible up the siding of a pretty white farmhouse on Jackson Bridge Road.

“The house looks totally fine, but if you look at the windowsills here, you can see the high water mark approximately eight feet above the (foundation),” he said.

McGuire and his staff have spent most of the past week-plus assessing flood-damaged properties like Curt and Kayla Ward’s place on Enon Church Road just off Highway 107.

“The two people that lived behind us, their homes were completely washed away,” Kayla Ward told News Channel 11 Monday. “It just shifted ours on the foundation. The walls are falling in, the floors, everything’s gone. Both of the barns, our garages are gone. Everything just went down the field.”

Theirs was one of more than 320 properties McGuire’s teams had reviewed, with 117 of those being deemed destroyed and 58 with major damage — with damage estimated at more than $37 million.

The work McGuire’s crew does will help determine the amount of compensation the Wards may someday receive from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Local county Emergency Management Agency directors have linked up with assessors to try and determine damage on individual and community levels.

They look at the property, and if a house isn’t completely destroyed, check for various signs of it being still a total loss, severely damage or having sustained minor damage.

“This is a total loss for the simple reason it’s above all the electrical and everything,” McGuire said of the Jackson Bridge Road house.

“We’re just assisting the EMA to get everything to TEMA and (on) to FEMA.”

Many people, like Kayla Ward, are still halfway in a state of shock given the events they experienced on Sept. 27.

“I was sitting on my porch about 11 in the morning and all of a sudden started seeing water coming up the road, which freaked me out,” Ward recalled. “We literally jumped up and grabbed our animals and left and we got to the upper side of the road. Within maybe an hour our whole house was underwater.”

The Wards’ house shifted on its foundation, leaving the walls falling in and the floors destroyed. The Nolichucky River’s waters, swollen to many times their normal size and raging with unimaginable force, took the Wards’ barns and garages.

“The two people that lived behind us, their homes were completely washed away.”

Register, register, register

Getting registered with FEMA is an absolute must if people — including hundreds more in neighboring Carter, Greene, Unicoi and Johnson counties — are to eventually receive something for property that’s almost certainly not covered by flood insurance.

Ward said that process was frustrating at first. She reached out to her homeowners’ insurance company and all claims were denied.

“We had to have the denial in order to file with FEMA if we wanted any assistance to deal with them,” she said.

The Wards spent several days last week trying to get registered.

“By Thursday, I still wasn’t able to get online and file with them,” Ward said. “And of course, we’re in the middle of digging through debris.”

Curt Ward got registered with FEMA over the weekend, Kayla Ward said Monday. That was the same day the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency had set up two “multi-agency resource centers” that included on-the-ground staff from FEMA, TEMA, Red Cross and several state agencies as well as the federal Small Business Administration.

In a media conference Monday, State Rep. Rebecca Alexander (R-Jonesborough) stressed the importance of getting registered with FEMA.

“If you have had any kind of damage at all from the storm it’s very important that you sign up to get this help, because things can change in a year and you may need this help and you would not get it unless you were signed up.”

Alexander also addressed rumors that she said amount to misinformation.

“I have heard people say FEMA and TEMA are going to take your land, steal your property — I’ve heard all kinds of absurd things,” she said. “None of it is true. The state emergency department as well as the federal, when you see them on the ground to help us … they are not here to do any harm to us.”

Alexander did encourage residents to make sure people on their property had proper FEMA or TEMA identification, including photo IDs.

Alexander also said the $750 people can get for immediate needs was not all of what a disaster victim would receive.

“This has not got anything to do with how much you’re going to receive for your property or your land or your home,” she said.

FEMA now has staff at local centers at Jonesborough’s old elementary school, 306 Forest Dr., and the driver’s license center in Elizabethton at 1736 U.S. Highway 19-E. They’ll answer questions in person about the several types of aid FEMA offers disaster-affected residents — and sign people up if they haven’t done so already.

FEMA offers immediate assistance of $750 to eligible individuals. People can also receive temporary financial aid for both housing and food. Over the longer term, FEMA’s flood relief program, administered through the states, provides monetary compensation for people whose property damage reaches a certain threshold.

Ward said both the in-person services and the aid are sorely needed.

“People need to put a face to it. They need to know that somebody is really listening to them.

“We’re very blessed because we’ve had so many people come in and try to help us and everybody stepped up, but there’s so many people that have it worse than us that need somebody to come in and talk to them.”

Hearing that FEMA was now on the ground offering in-person help at the centers and going out into affected communities left Ward hoping things would get better this week.

“I know that we’ll be okay, but I worry about the rest of my community and I just hope it gets better.”

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