Misinformation and Confusion Muddle Sandy Recovery

Homes are still in disrepair following Hurricane Sandy and residents are wondering how best to rebuild. New proposed flood maps could force residents to pay tens of thousands of dollars a year in flood insurance but many still don’t know where their homes fall in the different zones. Homeowners are grappling with decisions like should they elevate or simply leave it all behind.

Compounding every single one of these questions is the fact that it’s just too difficult to get a straight answer to satisfy any of them.

Before a crowd of about 150 people at Berkeley Township Elementary School Thursday night, representatives from Stop FEMA Now, the grassroots organization opposed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s advisory flood maps, along with local elected officials, discussed many of the issues residents are facing six months after the storm hit New Jersey’s coast.

And while the meeting was somewhat of a rallying cry for public support of opposition to FEMA’s flood maps, so too was it an opportunity for residents still struggling to rebuild to ask relatively straight forward questions and finally get some of the answers that have eluded them over the past several months.

“We come to about every meeting we hear about. I’m constantly on the computer, I’m constantly on their (Stop FEMA Now’s) website, I’m constantly on Facebook and the town’s website,” Bayville resident Terri Lynn Mahon said. “You have to talk to people. That’s really the only way to get the information. You have to do all your own research, that’s the only way to find the answers.”

But sometimes even that’s not enough. Mahon asked about Small Business Administration loans, asked if anyone else had a similar experience of being approved for one amount but only being granted a smaller amount. Even in a room full of people facing many of the same problems, that was a mystery.

Though her specific problem was unique to this group, it’s just another example of the same, shared issue.

Brick resident Frank Lawson has been attending Stop FEMA Now meetings since the group first convened, all 20 of them, in a Toms River sub shop. He said he’s got no plans to elevate his home, but that was a decision made after attending numerous meetings, studying the maps, and talking to a number of his neighbors who are facing the same problem.

Lawson said he feels for those still struggling to decide what to do with their homes. No matter what they decide, it won’t be easy. Even the simplest of answers are often hard to come by in a post-Sandy world.

“The problem is we’re not getting straight answers from the people in charge – from FEMA, from the state, from our elected officials,” he said. “The real problem is, no one knows what the answers are.”

Questions ranged from the complicated, like Mahon’s, to some more easily answered but still difficult for some. While FEMA has touted the availability of information online, some, including several seniors at Thursday’s meeting, were still unsure of where their homes are found on the agency’s new Advisory Base Flood Elevation Maps. When the discussion spread to sources of available funding, the confusion became even more apparently.

Even those who know about things like Community Development Block Grants, which are offered through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of the Congressionally-approved Sandy relief bill, are unsure when applications are being accepted and when the money will be released. Some have heard six months, others years.

All of it amounts to another layer of frustration piled on top of already existing layers of frustration.

The Stop FEMA Now effort has attracted attention from municipal and state officials, too. As the group tours the state, it’s not uncommon for local council members to appear along with representatives from both the State Senate and Assembly. At Thursday’s meeting State Assemblywoman DiAnne Gove and Assemblyman Brian Rumpf, both Ocean County Republicans, stopped by to offer their support of the cause.

“This is an important issue. It’s affected us tremendously,” Gove, a Forked River resident, said. “I haven’t been in my house for six months either. I think I’m getting back next Tuesday.”

Gove encouraged residents to spread the message, saying that their power is in numbers. The federal government’s efforts to fix flood insurance through remapping is a direct result of their mismanagement following 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, she said, and the uncertainty many residents are experiencing right now is something she and her fellow elected officials also feel.

Ultimately, Stop FEMA Now hopes it can answer some of those lingering questions while pursuing the greater goal of upending FEMA’s flood maps. The flood maps, which are in an advisory stage and will move to a preliminary stage, before being adopted within a year or two, will have a dramatic impact on coastal communities throughout the country, not just in New Jersey.

George Kasimos, the group’s founder, said most residents are still trying to understand how to go about rebuilding. Most don’t have a clue as to what they can expect when they’re hit with drastically higher flood insurance rates in a few short years. That’s why he and the rest of the Stop FEMA Now group continue to tour the state, hoping to add to their ranks of the informed.

“I’ve never done this advocacy stuff before,” he told the crowd. “But I know when something’s not right.”