Thawed but hurting

Seven months later, ice-storm cleanup not done, as communities press for U.S. aid

By OWEN BOSS
Staff Writer

Seven months after a devastating ice storm left 22,000 western Massachusetts residents without electricity and caused millions of dollars of damage to local forests, roads and bridges, debris is still being cleaned up.

And affected communities are still putting in requests for federal aid.

Plainfield Town Secretary Paula King said crews are still cleaning up debris from the town’s woods after it saw an estimated $211,000 in reported removal costs in the first week of the storm, between Dec. 11 and 18. The second round of aid requests, she said, is still being finalized. Included in their submission for the first week were costs associated with running a shelter at the Plainfield Safety Building for a week.

Since the storm, 12 cities and towns in Hampshire County have filed and been reimbursed for the money spent between Dec. 11 and 18, most of which was for debris removal and paying emergency crews who worked overtime to keep roads clear. Total damages for the towns during that period, according to figures submitted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, exceeded $1.25 million.

Another town still cleaning up from the storm, Cummington, one of the hardest hit in Hampshire County, will wait until it finishes off-street debris removal before sending out its final cost reports.

“I’d say we’ve gotten rid of about 80 percent of the debris. The remaining cleanup is basically now located entirely off of the main roads” Selectman James Drawe said. “The numbers FEMA has, those are just what they’ve estimated for our total. They will eventually pay us on the bills we send them.”

According to Annie Donovan, a FEMA external affairs specialist, the $1.32 million that has been put aside to reimburse the now estimated $1.76 million spent so far by municipalities across Hampshire County represents a cost estimate based on a series of factors, such as how many cubic yards of fallen debris had to be cleared and how much it cost for local emergency responders who worked to repair damaged roads and bridges and keep lanes clear while removing fallen trees.

Donovan said officials in most local communities, including those hit hardest by the ice storm, are still working to finalize their last submission for federal relief, which will represent all of the money spent since Dec. 18. When those final requests are submitted, the money can be sent out, she said.

In Chesterfield, which has reported more storm damage than any other municipality in Hampshire County, Selectman Roger Fuller said 99 percent of the storm debris has been removed. Town officials already filed their second round of paperwork for a little under $200,000.

“There may still be some remote roads that need brush clipping but our town is pretty much clean at this point,” Fuller said. “We have submitted our costs for the second round, so we are ahead of the curve in that respect, which is good.”

Ed Dahill, the town’s superintendent of streets, said the town expects about $130,000 in reimbursements after the second round.

“Most of the second round is strictly for debris removal,” Dahill said. “This second request we are putting in is for about $190,000 and we should get all 75 percent of that back.”

In the wake of the storm, FEMA offered presidential emergency declarations for Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, which meant that municipalities in those states would be reimbursed for up to 75 percent of the money spent cleaning up the mess, including debris removal and emergency services related to repairing damaged public facilities. The remaining 25 percent spent must be covered by the town applying for aid.

In Williamsburg, which reported a little more than $75,000 in costs for the first week after the storm, Town Administrator Steven Herzberg said storm cleanup is complete and now it’s just a matter of invoicing actual costs against FEMA’s estimates.

“Our damage claim was pretty much only for debris removal and all of that work is done,” Herzberg said. “There is more for us to report in terms of expenses incurred by the police, fire and highway departments during the storm and I’m just now waiting for some information from people to submit the final paperwork.”

Meanwhile, in Pelham, which suffered less damage from the ice storm than other towns in the region, Highway Superintendent Richard Adamceck said paperwork has yet to be completed and time spent cutting through red tape for funding has pushed the completion of the cleanup effort into next fall.

“We got kind of screwed because the money we needed for the cleanup didn’t arrive until after the leaves came out, so we won’t know for sure how much more is left until the leaves are off the trees,” Adamceck said. “We ended up with hangers in the top of these trees that are all leafed out, and now I’m going to have to go back in the fall, probably sometime after November, to see what else has to be done.”

All funding related to the storm must be approved by both the state emergency management agency and FEMA. The submissions process has been facilitated through meetings held between towns and FEMA project specialists.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com