Rural Alaska blog: The Village : Eagle: FEMA sending money to homeowners as early as this week

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I was born in Sitka, have lived in Kake, Skagway and Fairbanks and joined the ADN in 2005 after writing for the Anchorage Press and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. I started blogging for the paper in 2006 with The Trail, our blog about the governor's race. Then came the Alaska Politics blog. Now I'm covering government and rural affairs and live in Anchorage with my wife, Rebecca. (Update: Our daughter Alice was born May 31. Thanks everyone for the suggestions.) E-mail me at khopkins@adn.com and find me on Twitter at twitter.com/ADNVillage.

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Rural blog: The Village

Eagle: FEMA sending money to homeowners as early as this week

Posted by thevillage

Posted: July 2, 2009 - 9:40 am

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It's been nearly two months since the historic floods swamped the Yukon River town of Eagle. How's the rebuilding going?

Eagle resident Andy Bassich -- who had his sled dogs rescued by helicopter to escape the flood -- checked in last night to say FEMA was in town and money is coming soon. Volunteer carpenters are coming too, he said, but he's frustrated with the state Transportation Department, saying it's moving to slow to make gravel available, which is a key step in the rebuilding process.

Meantime, the state announced this week that FEMA has granted a request to include more regions and villages further down the Yukon in its flood relief effort. Check it out.

Bassich has been the coordinator of the Eagle Rebuilding Construction Team. Here's the message he sent to reporters:

A good day here in Eagle today. FEMA leadership came to Eagle today and met with all of the 13 home owners that are in need of having a new home built and gave the go ahead on funding and settling personal claims. The monies to cover the rebuild effort should go out to people later this week and we should be able to begin to make orders for the log home kits by early next week.

Monies are to be sent to the private homeowners, and they will work with myself and Eagle Tribal Council Donna Westphal and Chief Joyce Roberts to place the orders.

Bassich's dogs, the day of the flood

We have also received a commitment from the National organization MDS Mennonite Disaster Service, who has committed two skilled working crews to lead on the rebuilding of the cabins. They have an impeccable reputation of highly skilled workers, and top quality
craftsmanship.

Samaritans Purse has made a tremendous commitment of additional funds to help bring the standard of the homes up. and to run and maintain the Volunteer camp. They will also provide a core group to assist in co-ordination of funding and materials in Eagle. In addition they will be providing a crew of trained carpenters to Eagle to tackle the multitude of jobs which need to be accomplished by our deadline of
Sept. 15.

Still a lot to do here and this is the beginning but smiles came to the folks that lost everything today for the first time since May 3-4.

Now I need your help to light a fire under the Governor and DOT to get off their @#$%^&*() and get the gravel pit pushed and make gravel available to us to put down the pads for the homes. This has been a frustrating experience to deal with DOT they have provide ZERO help to us in terms of Roads maintenance and any type of fast tracking in our disaster. I have not witnessed such total incompetence and Waste in any agency ever. Everything hinges now on getting gravel to the home site and every day we wait is making it difficult to achieve our goal. we have Volunteers ready to move in to help us. but we must have the pads down before home kits can be delivered.

... We are on the verge of making something happen here which few if any have ever experienced with FEMA and we want to provide them with a big "Gold Star" for the efforts they and the state have made to assist us. ...

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