FEMA Works Fast

Every Saturday morning, the first thing I do when I get up is check my e-mail and check RickeyStokesNews.com to see if anything interesting has happened over night. Well, this past Saturday(May 2nd), I saw a posting that FEMA had declared individual assistance late Friday evening. So Mel immediately went online and applied for FEMA assistance. It didn't list that Alabama had been declared for individual assistance, but Mel went to the application anyway. She had done this a few days before, and it wouldn't let her apply. Well this time it did. Around 5:00 p.m., a FEMA adjuster called wanting to inspect the damage to their house. Mel and Ish ran over and met him at the house. He told them that a quality control person would probably contact them to double check his work since theirs was the first house in Alabama to be inspected. Well, Sunday as we were leaving church, Mel checked her phone. Sure enough the quality control guy had left her a message. So she went over to let him look around. They told her that she would have to apply for a SBA loan, and then FEMA would evaluate for possible grant money. Well, last night, Mel was checking the status on FEMA's website, and it looked like they had approved them for grant money. She was going to call today to see what it all meant. She almost had a heart attack this morning when she checked her bank balance and saw that FEMA had deposited a rather large sum of money into her account. She called FEMA and they said that it was indeed grant money. I guess they saw the extent of her damage and knew that they couldn't get a loan to fix all of that. They will probably still end up taking out a loan to complete the repairs and replace furniture, but the FEMA money will cover most of it if they do a lot of the work themselves. Several people at church have offered to help with the labor, so hopefully that will speed things up. They had thought about renting a house, but now that the money has come through to fix theirs, they are just going to stay with me until it's ready. FEMA is sending a packet of info in the mail to explain everything. Mel's waiting for that to come before she starts spending the money. You want to make sure you do everything just right when you're dealing with the Federal Government.