Gov. Mike DeWine’s June request for a presidential disaster declaration for Washington County and seven other counties due to April flooding was denied. DeWine has sent another letter requesting the declaration. Pictured is a car partially submerged in flood waters in a parking lot behind the Marietta Post Office on April 3. (File photo)

Gov. Mike DeWine has issued a second request for a federal disaster declaration for Washington County and seven other counties in Ohio due to severe April storms that caused flooding, landslides and tornadoes.

On June 3, DeWine sent a letter to President Joe Biden and made his first request that Biden issue a disaster declaration for April storms that caused damage in Washington, Morgan, Meigs, Monroe, Noble, Guernsey, Belmont and Jefferson counties, despite the Federal Emergency Management Agency determining the amount of damage is too low to qualify for federal assistance.

In that letter, DeWine stated the federal threshold for receiving public disaster assistance from FEMA is $21.7 million, and a FEMA/State/Local Joint Preliminary Damage Assessment (Joint PDA) performed the week of April 29 for 10 counties, that included the eight for which DeWine requested the declaration, showed the damage total in the eight counties to be $17.4 million, while local damage assessment for the eight counties showed damage totaling $50.5 million. DeWine claimed in the letter FEMA used Google Earth images and typically only one indicator to evalues sites, instead of requesting additional documents from local officials and using multiple factors to evaluate sites.

The June 3 request was denied according to a second letter DeWine sent to Biden by way of FEMA on July 19 and in it he asks again for a federal disaster declaration for the eight counties. He also asks for the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program to be approved statewide.

According to the EPA’s website, the Hazard Mitigation Program gives funds to states, territories and tribes for long-term hazard reduction after a major disaster is declared.

“I am appealing the denial of my June, 3, 2024, request for a Major Disaster Declaration for the state of Ohio,” DeWine said in the July 19 letter. “This request was submitted as a result of flooding, landslides, severe storms and tornadoes from April 1-4, that damaged critical infrastructure, such as roads and culverts, in multiple counties.”

He said in his July letter that the June request was denied on June 19 and the denial stated the damage was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments.

DeWine said in the letter that he has provided additional documentation and more specific information from local governments and the Ohio Emergency Management Agency.

“Upon reconsideration you will see that the totality of the circumstances in the disaster affected areas are beyond the state’s capabilities, and federal aid is necessary,” DeWine said in the letter.

According to the Code of the Federal Regulations at Section 206.48(a)(1), FEMA considers several factors when evaluating a governor’s request for a major disaster declaration. DeWine discussed some of these requirements in relation to the flooding in the eight counties in his letter.

“We evaluate the estimated cost of federal and nonfederal public assistance against the statewide population to give some measure of the per capita impact within the state,” the code section says. “We use a figure of $1 per capita as an indicator that the disaster is of such size that it might warrant federal assistance, and adjust this figure annually based on the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers.”

It also says the threshold for damages to receive public assistance is $1 million per disaster.

DeWine addresses issues he has with the per capita impact threshold in his letter. He said the per capita income indicator for Ohio does not always result in an equitable outcome for the state’s underserved and rural counties because they do not have the population or tax base of larger urban areas.

He asked FEMA to focus their evaluation of the disaster on equity and the totality of all factors, not just the state’s per capita indicator.

“For example, the population of the eight impacted counties is only 2.4% of the state’s total population, and it does not seem logical to apply the entire statewide per capita requirement to this localized event,” DeWine said in the letter.

He also said for the flooding event, the county-wide per capita impacts in the eight counties ranged from $7.57 to $204.86, which is more than the amount FEMA has set for the county per capita threshold of $4.60.

“We consider the extent to which state and local government measures contributed to the reduction of disaster damages for the disaster under consideration … if a state can demonstrate in its disaster request that a statewide building code or other mitigation measures are likely to have reduced the damages from a particular disaster, we consider that in the evaluation of the request,” the code section says. “This could be especially significant in those disasters where, because of mitigation, the estimated public assistance damages fell below the per capita indicator.”

DeWine addresses hazard mitigation efforts taken prior to the April flooding.

“Prior to this disaster, the state and local communities utilized FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and other mitigation grants to install floodwalls and purchase land located in high-risk areas … homes and businesses along the Ohio River no longer sustain the kind of devastating impacts they once did,” DeWine said in the letter.

“Additionally, during the event, individuals, businesses and local governments took efforts to mitigate losses by relocating items from first floors and evacuating low-lying areas.”

According to the code section, FEMA also looks at that the disaster history of an area within the last 12-month period to evaluate better the overall impact of an event on a state or locality, which includes considering federal disaster declaration and declarations by a governor and the extent to which the state has spent its own funds.

“The State also finds itself stretched thin after suffering multiple disasters over the last 24 months, some of them impacting this same geographical area (Jeffesron, Monroe, Guernsey, Noble and Meigs),” DeWine said in the letter. “Since 1985, (the) Ohio EMA has administered the State Disaster Relief Program for 91 incidents totaling over $113 million.”

He said during the Joint PDA for the April flooding incident, FEMA estimated the damages in the eight counties as $17.4 million and the state funding even 75% of that amount would far exceed its typical contributions to smaller incidents.

“Taken together, FEMA’s validated damage amount, state and local mitigation measures, the state’s disaster history in the past two years and availability of resources, require a Major Disaster Declaration to assist recovery efforts in these rural Appalachian communities,” DeWine said in his letter.

DeWine said in his letter that the greatest impact from the severe weather in April was damage to critical infrastructure in low tax revenue areas which makes paying for the repairs out of those areas’ own budgets not feasible.

Washington County Emergency Management Director Rich Hayes previously told The Times the damage for Washington County for roadways from the severe weather is estimated at a little over $2 million.

Washington County Commissioner James Booth agrees with DeWine that federal assistance is needed in Washington County and the other counties and there really should be some relief for Washington County and its residents.

“I applaud the governor for not taking no for an answer,” Booth said.

He also said that the U.S. spends millions in other countries but it needs to take care of its own.

“The federal government, it’s like they’re turning their nose up at us,” he said.

FEMA confirmed that DeWine submitted an appeal for a major disaster declaration for the April storms and that the appeal is currently under review. They offered no further comment on the situation.