Alabama residents affected by Hurricane Zeta frustrated state’s application still not approved
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Mobile, AL (WALA) — The pounding winds of Hurricane Zeta lasted just a few hours.
The ensuing financial devastation has gone on weeks. And residents of northwestern Mobile County wonder where the cavalry is.
“Where is FEMA? When we need ’em, where are they at?” asked Lisa Wilson, who avoided serious injury when a large tree crashed through the ceiling of her home on Lebaron Street.
Now, Wilson told FOX10 News, the house has no electricity and is barely livable. She said she is buying hundreds of dollars’ worth of gas each day to power a generator and is cooking meals on a fryer. But she added that she has no place to go and no renters’ insurance.
Wilson said she has resorted to setting up a GoFundMe page.
“What am I supposed to do? I mean, whenever I do here, you know, what am I supposed to do?” she said. “Because, I mean, here I am, me and my family, we’re staying in this house that’s really, actually, condemned. But we don’t want to leave our stuff, either.”
Wilson and other victims repeatedly have called the Federal Emergency Management Agency only to learn the agency is not taking Zeta applications in Alabama. Agency spokesman Mike Wade provided FOX10 News the same answer FEMA has given since the storm.
“It’s still being reviewed. … Nothing has been approved for Alabama at all,” he said.
Residents in Louisiana and Mississippi have been receiving emergency FEMA aid. Wade said the approval process is complex, depending on the number of counties included in the application and whether the state is seeking public assistance or aid to individuals.
He said he could not provide a timeline.
“It can take anywhere from weeks to months,” he said.
Citronelle Mayor Jason Stringer said meeting the threshold shouldn’t be a problem. He said damage estimates in Alabama run about $19 million – including some $12 million in Mobile County, alone.
Meanwhile, Wilson is far from the only resident in this area who needs the help. Robert and Leila Rogers fared even worse. A massive tree crashed into their home, causing a gash in Robert’s head that required 33 stitches.
Their home for more than five decades is now a pile of rubble after a tree sliced from the south end of the modest house to the north end, collapsing the entire building And the couple do not have insurance.
“We have nothing left. It just came through,” Leila Rogers said. “We took whatever we got out. We don’t have anything. It is just here to the ground. Our home. All the trees out at our house, which is, you know – it’s just awful.”
Rogers, 79, said she and her husband have relied on the generosity of her son and daughter-in-law.
“If it wasn’t for them and my grandkids, they just living from pillar to post, as I must say. It’s mostly with them right now,” she said. “They’ve all reached out to us, but all they can do is give us a place to put our heads down at.”
Rogers’ daughter-in-law, Audra Rogers, said she repeatedly has visited FEMA’s website in an attempt to help her mother – to no avail.
“It’s very frustrating, because, you know, you want to help your mother-in-law and father-in-law out,” she told FOX10 News. “And especially, you know … because they’ve been living there since, 1965?”
When and if FEMA approves that declaration, it will open up aid for both local governments and individuals. It also would open up low-interest loans from the Small Business Administration.
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