The rivers are back in their banks but the story of Missouri’s floods is far from written.
Debris, desolation, and damage assessments will remain lingering legacies of the four-month-long weather assault we had this spring.
The state emergency management agency has submitted 21 hazard mitigation applications to the federal government—nine of them for property buyouts. The buyouts cover 150 homes and total 8.6-million dollars.
SEMA spokesman Susie Stonner says those 150 homes are only a small part of the problems thousands of Missourians still struggle with. She says some people have not been in their homes since the March flooding and hundreds of others are still homeless because of later floods. She says damage assessment teams have identified 1700 homes or businesses as damaged, two-thirds of them as seriously-damaged.
The number of buyout-targets could rise as more assessments are made.
Some community leaders say the buyout recommendations from SEMA are inadequate–that far more homes should be purchased by government.
Buyouts of flooded properties in Missouri got serious 15 years ago. Since the ’93 floods, more than four-thousand homes have been purchased in the federal buyout program.
Download Bob Priddy’s story (:61 mp3)
