Report ALL damage today!
It’s critical to qualifying our area for state and federal assistance.
Butternut Valley Alliance Flood Response Fact Sheet
What to Do, Who to Call, What to Expect
Immediate response – make sure your home is Safe, Secure and Functional.
- Complete any immediate repairs, such as
- Removing flood water
- Removing unsafe trees
- Repairing driveways to allow access
- Report damage to the Office of Emergency Services (see below)
- Engage contractors or complete emergency repairs
- Electrical outages
- Water system outages
- Appliance damage
Short-term response – Anything in the home that was in contact with flood water needs to be cleaned or removed. Flood waters are contaminated with manure, raw sewage and other hazardous chemicals.
- Drywall, wet insulation, carpet and carpet pads, furniture etc. need to be removed
- Electrical outlets and wiring that was underwater may be damaged and should be replaced
- Homeowner wells where flood water was around the casing need to be tested for contamination
- Flooded basements can also result in foundation damage and should be inspected
- If basements are pumped too quickly, saturated soil may damage walls
- It may be better to flood basements with clean water to lower risk of contamination
- Monitor septic systems to confirm they are not water-logged and are still functioning
Mold is the biggest immediate homeowner risk after the flood waters recede.
- Wood, paper and insulation are perfect materials for supporting mold and should be removed
- A 1:10 bleach to water solution (not “splash-less” bleach) is recommended for both cleaning surfaces that were in contact with flood water and to stop mold
- Use dehumidifiers to dry out rooms, basements and crawl spaces to limit mold growth
Document damages and time spent on cleanup and repairs
Track the hours, gallons of fuel, number of people hired, etc. you have used and expect to use in your cleanup. Every volunteer and good Samaritan who helped clean up, direct traffic, repair a driveway or pumped out a basement counts to meeting the minimum threshold for disaster aid. This is not the time to undersell the efforts that the community has made.
Who to contact
Otsego County Office of Emergency Services, Victor Jones, Acting Director, (607) 547-4226, jonesv@otsegocounty.com, is responsible for collecting information on total damages to qualify a community for state and federal assistance. Even if you are completing the work yourself, the cost of your time and materials counts toward the community total. Report, to the best of your ability:
- How much of your home flooded, how many square feet were damaged and what appliances were impacted (furnace, hot water heater, etc.)
- Property damage such as driveway washout, lawn damage, downed trees that need to be removed, outbuildings that moved or were damaged, lost lawn furniture and damaged equipment
- How much time and expense you have already spent cleaning up and, if possible, provide an estimate of your ongoing cleanup and repair costs. If you have contractor estimates, share them
- Damage to fences, fields, crops and livestock.
- Whether you have or don’t have flood insurance or federal crop insurance
- Whether you have mobility, health, financial or other issues that limit your ability to complete the necessary cleanup so that additional county and community services can be directed to your needs
Village or Town leadership collects and reports damage to public infrastructure such as clogged culverts, landslides along roadways, sinkholes, and ditches. You should also inform your Mayor or Town Supervisor about your own damages. While it is the County Office of Emergency Services’ role to collect the individual damage information, keeping the town and village leadership in the know helps make sure that services get directed where they are needed. (Town and village highway departments are generally prohibited from working on private property.)
Otsego County Code Enforcement and County Department of Health should be contacted about health concerns and building safety concerns. Otsego County Code Enforcement, (607) 547-4214; Otsego County Health Department, (607) 547-4230.
The NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) must be contacted, and permits received, to do work along and in streams even after a disaster declaration. However, a disaster declaration makes this process much easier and makes allowances for clean-up that are not normally permitted. NYSDEC region 4. (607) 652-7741.
Otsego County Soil and Water Conservation District. Soil and Water is a good resource for dealing with erosion and stream bank repairs along fields and lawns. (607) 547-8337 Let the Governor know we need help. https://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form
Ask for help – and then keep asking.
Responding to a disaster is exhausting. Please ask for help from your community, your church, your friends and from the county and municipality. Asking for help is the way through this challenge – there is some limited help that the county can provide, but by asking for help you activate your networks to find those who are able to help. Keep asking. Many of our residents are elderly, have health issues, or are just overwhelmed by the scale of their cleanup. Check in on your neighbors, especially the elderly and infirm, to see if they need help. Call 911 if there is a medical or other emergency.
Long-term steps
The County Office of Emergency Services, working with the state, needs to document specific minimum thresholds to trigger a state of emergency declaration and make a request for FEMA disaster aid. Documenting damages and getting the declaration can take a few weeks in cases like the flooding in the Butternut Valley.
It is essential for local governments and individuals to proactively communicate damages and repair expenses to allow those thresholds to be met. The cost of damage is calculated based what it will cost to repair damages to current state/federal/local minimum codes and standards using standardized federal cost schedules. These schedules are often higher than local prevailing rates. Full repair cost would include both the emergency repairs and subsequent planned work to bring the site up to minimum code even if that means replacing the work done during the emergency repairs.
The threshold to qualify for a Presidential Disaster declaration is roughly $30 million in damages at the state level. Once the state level is met, qualifying individual counties meet the required minimum as well. The NY State Department of Homeland Security Emergency Services, working with data supplied by the County Emergency Services Department, calculates this data and if the disaster qualifies, will ask the governor to request a FEMA emergency response. School districts, towns, villages, state and county lands, fire departments, water districts and the like benefit from the declaration. FEMA covers 75% of the repair costs and NY state generally splits the 25% local match between themselves and local jurisdictions.
There are two major disaster assistance programs that FEMA supports: Individual Assistance and Public Assistance. Small Business Administration loans may also be available for affected businesses as well as for individual property owners.
- Individual Assistance is meant to help individual homeowners with direct expenses related to the disaster and generally tops out at $35,000 per home and is limited to those without flood insurance
- Public Assistance is meant for municipal and other public entities to make repairs
- In Federal Disaster zones, affected businesses and homeowners may apply for Small Business Administration Loans that make available favorable loan rates to support repairs and allow recipients to refinance existing loans
Looking ahead
Every Municipality has a Hazard Mitigation Plans which is updated regularly. It is the document that identifies Hazard Mitigation Projects that can be funded with two federal grant programs: The Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) and the Building Resilient Infrastructure in Community program (BRIC).
The effects of the recent flooding should be taken into consideration when HMPs are updated, if not sooner. HMPs should identify specific sites and what is to be accomplished, which is easier to do once damage has occurred.
HMGP is especially important as there is a 180-day window after a Presidential Declaration to add projects to the Hazard Mitigation Plan and apply for grant funding from HMGP to do large scale Hazard Mitigation such as modifying culverts, moving critical infrastructure or creating flood control basins.
The town or village Hazard Mitigation Plan should reflect common sense issues that need to be addressed. This type of flooding is no longer a 100-year event but has happened multiple times in the past two decades. Planning to mitigate these impacts and build community resiliency is what these federal grant programs support. Going forward, the towns and villages should update their mitigation plans with this flood event in mind. Input from community members is important for these updates.