MEMA to determine if Swampscott eligible for assistance following flooding from storms

SWAMPSCOTT – Tuesday’s rainstorms delivered more than flooding water, as a Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) request for information on damages caused nervous residents to inundate Town Hall late this week with questions wondering if the area would qualify for government assistance in the cleanup and – if so – what that assistance required.”It’s important for residents to know that this is data collection, not an application for funding,” Town Administrator Andrew Maylor emphasized on Friday, the last day that a MEMA representative was scheduled to be in Town Hall to help residents submit lists of damage. “We are collecting data to determine if we are eligible for assistance ? At some point, MEMA will need to make a designation if we’re eligible for something.But MEMA officials were not optimistic that residents would be eligible for assistance other than low-interest loans through the Small Business Association (SBA) because the storms did not cause the minimum “threshold” of damage.”For federal money, it has to be catastrophic, not just people pumping water out of basements,” said MEMA public information officer Peter Judge. “We don’t have a number at this point, but we’re not really close.” But qualifying for the SBA program “it is very possible that their threshold will be made.”Thunderstorms early Tuesday morning dropped 5.73 inches of rain on Swampscott within hours, according to the National Weather Service, prompting flooding that made many roads impassible, submerged basements and cars, and caused sewer backups in many homes. Since Wednesday, a MEMA representative has been at Town Hall, helping residents fill out forms that catalogued their losses.But state guidelines require approximately 500 or more dwellings in a county to contain moderate and/or major uninsured damages in order for a Major Disaster Declaration to be made. Without such a declaration, residents will not qualify for individual assistance from FEMA, according to a press release issued by MEMA on Tuesday.A disaster declaration by the Small Business Administration, however, is triggered in less damaging circumstances, according to the press release. These circumstances include 25 claimants – homes, residences, or businesses – who have an uninsured loss of at least 40 percent of the value of the damaged property and/or five or more businesses that will likely suffer at least 40 percent uninsured loss of revenue over the period they will be closed, the press release said.But this has led to lots of questions and confusion among residents – particularly when coupled with last week’s catastrophic failure at the wastewater pumping station and a cracked water pipe on Wednesday.Some residents on Friday criticized the town because they worried that not enough people were aware that the county’s eligibility for aid depends on residents submitting lists of damages.Banks Road resident Tracy Cassidy said that she had received a “vague” phone message from the town about the MEMA representative being at Town Hall until Friday and had rushed down. “I thought it was to answer questions and didn’t know it was to fill out damage assessments,” Cassidy said. “We’re not going to reach the requirements if people don’t know that they have to do this.”Others criticized the FEMA regulations.They say they need 500 complaints for FEMA,” said Humphrey Street resident Kristyn Flannery. “But I feel like (FEMA’s) giving the town the runaround because they think that if you live in Swampscott you have money and that’s not necessarily true. MEMA is doing its part as much as it can, but there are so many people involved it’s hard to get a straight answer.”Maylor agreed that it was difficult to deliver information. He estimated “a couple hundred” calls have come to his office about everything from trash pickup, to declaring a state of emergency to insurance policies. He shared an email that he had written for selectmen that contained 21 “facts” about the incident that addr