Denial ends process for seeking federal assistance

•April 27, 2016•

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) today denied the state’s appeal for federal assistance to help local governments in several counties recover from severe flooding and storms in late December and early January.

“The process is supposed to take into account a multitude of factors, but this denial demonstrates that only the numbers really matter,” said James K. Joseph, director of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA). “States with high populations concentrated in urban areas, such as we have in northeastern Illinois, often struggle to reach their thresholds, particularly when the impacts are in rural, sparsely populated areas of the state. Once again our poorest communities continue to suffer because of this unfair process.”     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.