FEMA officials in Lake County to decide who gets aid
Federal officials began touring flooded neighborhoods along the Fox and Des Plaines rivers and Chain O' Lakes and urged Lake County residents to tell their stories.
Six teams from the Federal Emergency Management Agency arrived in Illinois on Tuesday to begin determining if federal money is needed to help offset flood and storm damage over the past three weeks.
Rosemarie Hunter, a FEMA spokeswoman, said one team will be in Lake County "until we have a better understanding of the extent of the damage."
"We want to see it all and talk to people to determine the overall extent of the damage," Hunter said. "I can't give a timetable on how long that will take."
FEMA's arrival comes nearly two weeks after Gov. Rod Blagojevich declared the Cook, McHenry, Lake and Kane counties state disaster areas.
Tuesday's tour took in about 101 homes in Fox Lake hard hit by flood waters. Subdivisions included Knollwood Park, King's Island and Atwater Park. In the Fox River/Chain O' Lakes area, about 400 homes have been affected by flooding.
What officials saw was dead grass, water marks on homes, sandbags used for about two weeks to fend off rising flood waters, and the smell of stale pond water.
The seven-person team of federal, state, county and local officials was accompanied by Ed Lescher, director of Fox Lake's Emergency Services Disaster Agency. Lescher pointed out the hardest-hit areas and where crawlspaces and basements were underwater for the final 10 days of August.
Hunter said they didn't need to enter most homes to determine damage, because water marks left behind told the real story.
"We are still doing our preliminary damage assessment at this point," she said. "We are still gathering information from the damaged areas and will know more at a later date."
That information is put into a formula to determine if individual homes or full counties should be declared disaster areas and receive federal assistance, Hunter said. Each potential disaster area is weighed on its own merits to determine the extent of damage and ranking it should receive.
Federal assistance could range from temporary disaster housing to low-interest loans needed for repairs or replacement of flood-damaged property.
She urged residents not to wait for a determination and instead begin the cleanup and repair process.
"We won't know anything until we get past the individual damage assessments," she said. "And there is no telling how long that could take."
She said a schedule of where teams will be in each county has not been established. Officials will inform local agencies on the day they will tour areas before setting out.