Miami, October 28 Federal and state emergency authorities will begin providing temporary housing to people affected by Hurricane Ian in Florida (USA) in November, where it landed a month ago and caused one of the worst natural disasters in its history, with 119 deaths and billions of dollars in property damage.
Thomas McCool, coordinator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), reported on Friday by conference call that starting in November this government entity will begin distributing the first industrial containers adapted to house those who have lost their homes to Ian.
The official stressed that the beneficiaries of the Interim Direct Housing Assistance will renew this program from month to month, with a maximum limit of 18 months, and hope to help “several thousand” people and families affected by the hurricane, which last September made landfall on the southern Florida coast of the Gulf of Mexico with winds of 150 mph.
This program also includes manufactured homes, travel caravans, as well as direct rental housing and repairs of multi-family buildings.
For his part, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Kevin Guthrie, informed in the same conference call that the State will begin delivering the first trailers in the next 10 or 14 days for a total of about 2,000 that will be used as temporary housing for at least 6 months, mostly in Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto and Lee counties.
The implementation of this program is due to the fact that the rental assistance that is provided is not sufficient to cover the housing problem of thousands of affected people, as reported on Friday, while both officials recalled that there are other initiatives developed by organizations. humanitarians to help in this matter.
McCool noted that to date, more than 170,000 families have applied for financial assistance from FEMA, which still has more than 2,400 employees in the field and in total has provided more than $ 1.56 billion in grants, loans and payments from insurance companies. floods to the state and families.
Of that amount, 661.6 million went to families to cover housing costs and other needs.
“Even for a state that is no stranger to hurricanes, this has been huge. It has challenged our partners at the state, local and federal levels in a way that hasn’t been seen in many years,” McCool acknowledged.
Guthrie estimated that the state-developed response deployment could be closed in about seven years, less than that required for other natural disasters such as Hurricane Michael, which struck northwest Florida in 2018.
DEATH AND DEVASTATION
Ian landed as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with a maximum of 5, and after crossing the Florida Peninsula from west to east, it exited into the Atlantic and subsequently hit South Carolina.
As many as 42,000 workers worked to restore electricity in Florida, where about 2.7 million homes lost energy in the first 24 hours after the hurricane hit.
According to the specialized website Poweroutage, exactly one month after Ian’s arrival in Florida, 6,464 subscribers still have no supplies in Florida to date, 4,917 of them in Lee County, Ian’s “ground zero”.
According to the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, 119 people have died in this state to date as a result of the hurricane, which also left at least $ 1,800 million in agricultural losses according to a preliminary report by the state authority in the area. .
For its part, the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund, commonly known as the “Cat Fund,” a state program that provides key back-up coverage to real estate insurers, reported a $ 10 billion loss from Hurricane Ian, according to reports. reported Wednesday by officials of this entity.
