Schumer and Spitzer

visit disaster site

By TOM KANE

ROSCOE, NY - “This area has seen four 50-year storms in 18 months, so we need to come to the assistance of this community,” Senator Charles Schumer said to an assembly of federal, state and local officials and the press at the Roscoe Fire House on Monday, June 25.

Governor Eliot Spitzer visited the site earlier and flew over the area to assess the damage. He pledged that he would declare the area around Route 206 in Colchester a disaster area.

Schumer bemoaned the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has established guidelines for assistance that requires a minimum of $23,000,000 in damage.

“We’re going to ask FEMA for a waiver to this requirement,” Schumer said. “They’ve done it before.” But, he added, it will be tough to get the money. With the governor’s declaration, the waiver is more likely to happen, he said.

An early estimate of the cost of the damages put the price tag at over $20 million, according to Dennis Wichalski, assistant director of community affairs for the New York Emergency Management Office (NYEMO). “We are doing all we can to come to the aid of these people,” he said.

Wichalski would not speculate whether FEMA would waive the $22 million guideline.

Schumer said that the community around Roscoe and Colchester, where the disaster actually happened, was not a rich community, and residents needed help.

According to a preliminary assessment, 37 homes in the area were damaged, 30 of them so severely that they will have to be razed, rather than repaired.