Thousands of New Jersey residents have turned to FEMA since Hurricane Sandy caused widespread devastation and the organization reports providing half of the $1 billion in relief the Garden State has already received. FEMA Deputy Federal Coordinating Officer in New Jersey Bill Vogel told NJ Today Managing Editor Mike Schneider that he’s very involved in the recovery process, which he believes is moving at a good pace. He also said the budget cuts caused by sequestration won’t effect the recovery process in the near future.
Recovery continues more than four months after the storm. “We’re thoroughly involved in the recovery process now and we’re working with the state real hard in order to be able to make sure that they’ve identified all of the areas where they might need some help and if there’s anything we need to do in order to be able to get another agency here to help them, we will certainly continue to do that,” Vogel explained.
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He also cleared up some confusion surrounding a perceived end to overtime for FEMA in New Jersey. Vogel explained that FEMA is supporting an 80-hour pay period with 40 hours per week but there isn’t a cut in overtime. The overtime needs to be justified and approved, but he said there is as much overtime as needed to support New Jersey. “There’s no cutback in any of the services that we’re providing to the state of New Jersey,” he said.
FEMA relief centers have closed since the storm amid some protest from officials like Rep. Frank Pallone, but Vogel said nine disaster recovery centers remain open and still see about 100 people per day asking for assistance. At the peak, 34 centers were open.
Some of the people seeking assistance are new registrants. Vogel encourages anyone who sustained damage from Hurricane Sandy to register with FEMA by calling 800-621-3362 or going online and visiting disasterassistance.gov.
Vogel said he’s not sure why there are still some residents who haven’t registered. “We’re out canvassing communities, we have our FEMA core with us canvassing communities, we have the community relations section that’s out there walking around, talking to people,” he said. “We just find that there are pockets of people who for some reason or another had not registered.”
While it’s difficult to compare New Jersey’s recovery to that of New York because of varying location and type of damage, Vogel said he coordinates with New York to make sure the basic policies are in sync. “I talk with the federal coordinating officer from New York constantly,” he said. “We’re working on one project for instance for mold remediation. We’re making sure that both of our programs are in sync with one another.”
Many have expressed concern that the automatic budget cuts going into effect because of sequestration will negatively impact the Hurricane Sandy recovery, but Vogel said FEMA will see no effect in the near term. “We hope that … at some point in time our Congress is able to make sure that we’ve got everything agreed upon on the budget and it should have no effect on us now at all,” he said.
Vogel said New Jersey is recovering at a pace he expected. “We’re doing a great job. New Jersey’s got a great program going with their public assistance effort. We have obligated some $190 million to them in the public assistance, the infrastructure repair,” he said. “The housing program is moving along very, very well. We have 57 people in temporary housing units and we have 114 people in those units that we’ve rehabilitated at Fort Monmouth.”