CHARLESTON, W.Va. — An emergency meeting of the Kanawha County Commission Wednesday in the wake of last week’s severe flooding saw some disaster funding distributed.
Roughly $105,000 was taken from $500,000 set aside from the county rainy day fund, according to Commissioner Dave Hardy.
“$50,000 to the Elk Community Center, which had six to eight inches of water and is in the middle of trying to get it cleaned up, $25,000 to the town of Clendenin and $30,000 to the Clendenin Volunteer Fire Department which lost a lot of its equipment,” he said breaking down the funding.
The commission expected to be reimbursed by FEMA, but couldn’t afford to wait out the process because need in the wake of the flooding is so great.
“This is not a tremendous amount of money in light of the magnitude of the disaster,” Hardy said. “We’ll probably recover this from FEMA, but generally our experience is that it takes about 15 to 18 months to get reimbursed from FEMA. We don’t have time to wait on FEMA right now, and we’re going to try to get everything cleaned up as fast as we can.”
Hardy said the commission sets emergency money aside each year for disasters, which have been no stranger to Kanawha County recently.
“We’ve had our share of disasters in our county in the last few years. Two big examples of course are the derecho in 2012 and the water crisis in 2014,” he said. “Those are bad, but the good news is our emergency response program has gotten better and better.”
The commission will meet for a regular meeting on Thursday, July 7. President Kent Carper said Wednesday night that another emergency meeting before then would be held if necessary.