In last month's article, I informed members of how your Cooperative was impacted by the ice storm that plagued most of Southern Illinois on February 11th and 12th causing outages to approximately 11,700 members.  As I mentioned in my article, this was likely the worst ice storm to hit your Cooperative's system in our 70 year history.  At the conclusion of the storm, your Cooperative has determined that the cost of the storm damage and restoration efforts totaled $1.9 million.  This article describes the efforts to obtain financial assistance thru state and federal agencies to recover some of the costs associated with the storm.

The Illinois Emergency Management (IEMA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has a number of criteria they consider when determining whether an event qualifies for a disaster declaration.  These criteria include the impacts and the per capita costs. FEMA will not make a declaration for an ice storm without reaching a $1.24 per capita impact indicator for the State.  This means the State of Illinois must have approximately $15.5 million in total eligible costs for an event to qualify.  If this total is met, then FEMA looks to see which counties have met the $3.11 per capita county impact indicator to determine the counties that would qualify.

During the storm, IEMA requested that all damage assessments and cost estimates be submitted by February 22nd.  Your Cooperative submitted this information to IEMA and followed up with IEMA representatives in early March.  According to IEMA, the costs of all entities that submitted damage assessments and cost estimates for this ice storm totaled approximately $5.5 million.  Due to the fact that this ice storm primarily hit the most southern and southeastern areas of Illinois, which is not considered widespread when considering the entire state, and given that the assistance for an ice storm is based upon a per capita of the state basis, your Cooperative has been informed that there will not be any financial assistance available for this storm. 

Soon after this determination was made in Illinois, your Cooperative learned that Missouri Cooperatives would be receiving FEMA assistance for this same ice storm.  In order to qualify for assistance in Missouri, the damages must total the same $1.24 per capita of the state but for Missouri, this only equates to approximately $6.5 million. 

In summary, this ice storm hit the three most southern Illinois cooperatives very hard but there was very little ice accumulation and associated damage outside of our territories.  Given that Illinois contains the third largest city in the United States and that FEMA assistance is based upon per capita numbers, our storm totals in Illinois would have to be much larger to receive the FEMA assistance that adjacent states will be receiving for the same ice storm.  In addition, the ice accumulations were higher in Illinois than in surrounding states which means that Illinois cooperatives suffered more damage per system than adjacent states but will not be receiving FEMA assistance.

Your Cooperative is working with the Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives and others to see if there is any way to change or modify the way FEMA assistance is made available to entities that are affected by the same storm but happen to fall across different state boundaries.

See you next month and as always,

                                                      "We'll keep the light on for you."