After gathering damage reports, Governor Kevin Stitt is requesting a Major Disaster Declaration from the federal government to assist 13 counties with ice storm damage. Those counties are Caddo, Canadian, Cleveland, Dewey, Grady, Kingfisher, Kiowa, Logan, Noble, Oklahoma, Payne, Pottawatomie and Roger Mills. They had an estimated $27 million in debris removal and other damages.
Because of the pandemic, FEMA has changed it’s policies for damage assessments. That, in turn, took state officials longer to gather the information needed to develop a request for federal aid.
“The combination of three days of freezing rain and an early fall time period made this ice storm especially destructive to a large portion of our state,” said Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security Director Mark Gower. “We hope that the federal government will act quickly and approve Governor Stitt’s request so our hard-hit communities can begin to recover some of the extensive costs associated with responding to this significant winter storm.
Other counties could be added at a later time as more information is collected.
“I commend the dozens of city and county emergency managers and ODEMHS staff who have worked tirelessly to collect and enter more than 1,000 damage reports in order to make the case for federal assistance,” said Stitt. “I urge the federal government to quickly approve this declaration to speed up our recovery.”
If approved, federal funding will be used to assist the various governments and rural electric cooperatives with debris removal, infrastructure repair and other costs associated with the storm damage.
