Illinois leaders hope new law will distribute federal disaster dollars fairer

Posted on October 20, 2018

Flooding — A new law signed a few weeks ago requires FEMA to more strongly consider the severity of damage to rural areas, even if it’s in Illinois as opposed to a neighboring state that’s less populated as a whole.(Photo courtesy multimedia.illinois.gov)

By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD – When a flood hit a small central Illinois town three years ago, FEMA was not much help, because Illinois has a large population. In a place like Kincaid, in Christian County, the numbers worked against you.

“We don’t have the resources in rural, small towns,” Kincaid police chief Dwayne Wheeler told a news conference Friday at IEMA in Springfield. “Once we found out we were not getting assistance, we had to pull together. The volunteers with the citizens, and churches, and all over the united states, we ended up getting about $70,000 in donations.”

Kincaid and other small places will do much better the next time there is a disaster, thanks to a new law President Trump signed a few weeks ago. It requires FEMA to give weighted consideration to the scale of damage done to a rural area, as opposed to a per-capita number based on the state population as a whole.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected]

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