Copyright 2005 The Commercial Appeal, Inc.
By William C. Bayne
Staff reporters Richard Thompson and Toni Lepeska contributed to this story.
The Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)
DeSoto County municipalities that sent police and firefighters to South Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina struck Aug. 29 will have to bear most of the costs for that assistance.
“I haven’t received anything in writing from FEMA, but that’s my understanding,” Horn Lake Mayor Nat Baker said. “It makes it tough on all of us.”
Southaven Mayor Greg Davis said he had been notified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that reimbursements to the municipalities would cover no straight time salaries for fire or police assistance provided.
“They’ll pay overtime costs, but not the regular salaries,” he said.
The federal agency has also turned thumbs down on backfill costs - the expenses of hiring officers to fill in for those detailed to emergency response elsewhere.
The ruling has caused a budgetary problem for Southaven, Davis said.
“We’re taking a $129,000 hit, but it’s torn up our budgets for last year and this year. I don’t know how we’re going to carry it.”
Olive Branch Mayor Sam Rikard estimated city police spent 3,000 hours on the Coast helping out in the aftermath of Katrina, and firefighters spent about 3,600 hours of work helping. Some of those hours were based on straight time and some were based on overtime.
He did not know how much money the city spent on the effort, but getting reimbursed was never the point of sending help. It was about being a good neighbor, Rikard said.
“We’ll just consider that as our gift to the Gulf Coast,” the mayor said.
Baker said he would have sent officers and firefighters if no reimbursement was offered.
In addition to the city’s firefighters and police, he sent Emergency Management Director Tommy Bledsoe and the city’s emergency response van.
The van is still in use in what once was the city of Waveland, he said.
“We’re in an area that’s subject to earthquakes and tornadoes. You want to send help when you can because you never know when you might need help yourself,” he said.
But he said the lack of reimbursement might push aldermen to be less willing to send help in the future.
“I would hope that we could sit down with some folks and get this resolved,” he said.
Hernando Deputy Fire Chief Marshel Berry said all he had expected FEMA to repay was the overtime costs. “I don’t know how much of the overtime they’re going to pay.
“I won’t know that until next month.”
Requests to FEMA public affairs officials in Washington for documentation on different types of reimbursable expenses were unproductive.
Debbie Wing, a spokesman for the agency, said FEMA personnel on the coast would have a better handle on what types of assistance would be reimbursed and the reasoning for those decisions.
The FEMA task force number on the coast went unanswered Friday afternoon.