Today is the last day for the public to register for individual assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, marking 60 days after the declaration of a major disaster in the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to make sure that everybody that needs to register get it done. Oct. 5th is the deadline,\u201d federal coordinating officer Stephen M. DeBlasio Sr. said.<\/p>\n
FEMA may accept late registration, provided it is justified, DeBlasio said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf, for some reason, someone has a reasonable explanation as to why they didn\u2019t register in time, either on my authority or my deputy\u2019s authority, we can actually accept a late registration. But it would have to be justified as to why they would not have known after all the broadcasting that we\u2019ve done about the process,\u201d DeBlasio said.<\/p>\n
As of Friday, 8,690 have registered for FEMA individual assistance. In Saturday\u2019s update, 4,460 applications were approved.<\/p>\n
FEMA has approved over $15.6 million in housing assistance and over $6.8 million in other needs assistance, bringing the current total assistance under the individual and households program to over $22.4 million.<\/p>\n
FEMA\u2019s individual assistance is available to U.S. citizens, non-citizen nationals, and qualified aliens with disaster-related damage on Saipan; however, they continue to encourage everyone to apply.<\/p>\n
FEMA said they will refer those who they were not able to help to other organizations and organizations can also get information from them.<\/p>\n
\u201cCARE, Red Cross, they can come to us for information on these individuals so that they can see who we helped, who we didn\u2019t help, how much we are able to help them and to hopefully meet those unmet needs, the gaps between what we can do and what the voluntary agencies can pick up and continue to support,\u201d DeBlasio said.<\/p>\n
FEMA will keep the Disaster Recovery Center in the Multi-Purpose Center in Susupe open until Oct. 9. After that, those who have queries, issues, appeals, and follow-ups on their assistance application may call FEMA\u2019s toll free number.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the [Oct.] 9th the DRC folks on the FEMA side of the house will be demobilized. We\u2019re looking at, possibly, right now the Small Business Administration continuing to run what they call a Disaster Loan Operation Center or DLOC,\u201d DeBlasio said.<\/p>\n
Public assistance<\/strong><\/p>\n FEMA has also already started reimbursing public or government projects under the public assistance program.<\/p>\n \u201cThe public assistance program is working rapidly right now,\u201d DeBlasio said. \u201cFEMA is going to reimburse at a minimum, 90 percent of what it cost to rebuild public infrastructure.\u201d<\/p>\n As of Saturday, over $706,000 was already obligated under the Public Assistance Categories A-B or Emergency Work. According to FEMA, these are works \u201cthat must be performed to reduce or eliminate an immediate threat to life, protect public health and safety, and to protect improved property that is significantly threatened due to disasters or emergencies declared by the President.\u201d<\/p>\n Under Categories C-G or Permanent Work, more than $4,300 has been obligated so far. These are work \u201crequired to restore a damaged facility, through repair or restoration, to its pre-disaster design, function, and capacity in accordance with applicable codes and standards.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cObligated\u201d means that the funds were made available to the state via electronic transfer following FEMA’s final review and approval of public assistance projects.<\/p>\n \u201cWe probably have a couple of million dollars that are about to be released,\u201d DeBlasio said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today is the last day for the public to register for individual assistance with the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7056,7383,7384,493],"class_list":["post-211751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-care","tag-dloc","tag-emergency-work","tag-fema"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}