Damage assessments continue after last week's severe weather

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — "We've done step one with the declaration," Greene County Presiding Commissioner Bob Dixon said Friday. "We're tracking all of the expenses."

On Friday, city and county officials declared a state of civil emergency regarding massive outages and damages from severe weather last week.

Dixon says if there's enough damage, they could request assistance from the Stafford Act reimbursement program.

The threshold for approval under the Stafford Act is significantly lower than traditional statewide requests for FEMA assistance.

"The threshold on that in the county is a little less than one and a half million dollars, [due to damages including] structures, like infrastructure and governmental public buildings, that sort of thing," Dixon said. "Statewide, in order for the Governor to make that request of the President, it's got to be upwards of a little over $13 million."

Governor Kehoe made a formal request for FEMA assistance last week for damages after tornados broke out across the state from March 30-April 8.

"It allows the county to recoup cost," Dixon said. "Hopefully [the county can] get the funds back that the taxpayers are expending to do the response and the recovery."

Springfield Greene County Office of Emergency Management Director Larry Woods says his team is still assessing damage.

"We've done just over 115 damage assessments to this point," Woods said. "We still have two crews out in the field doing those. We've assessed, at least according to our criteria, the possibility of about 35 either majors [damage] or destroyed structures, primarily businesses or residences."

Woods says he believes they'll meet the minimum for the Stafford Act reimbursement, but says it's too early to say for certain.

"I think we'll will have met our threshold without much difficulty," Woods said. "We're still assessing the individual assistance side, which is the damage assessments and things that are currently ongoing."

The civil emergency expires this Friday for county residents.

Springfield's civil emergency expires May 29.