President Joe Biden approves disaster declaration for Georgia after Hurricane Helene
President Joe Biden made a disaster declaration for Georgia Tuesday, meaning federal disaster money will be available in Georgia for areas affected by Hurricane Helene, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
FEMA initially announced that residents in Appling, Brooks, Coffee, Columbia, Jefferson, Liberty, Lowndes, Pierce, Richmond, Tattnall and Toombs counties will be eligible for federal funding now that a disaster declaration has been issued. Assistance includes grants for temporary housing, home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from Hurricane Helene’s impact, said FEMA.
Tuesday afternoon, the disaster declaration was amended to add Atkinson, Bacon, Ben Hill, Berrien, Bulloch, Burke, Candler, Chatham, Clinch, Colquitt, Cook, Echols, Emanuel, Evans, Glascock, Irwin, Jeff Davis, Jenkins, Johnson, Lanier, Laurens, Lincoln, McDuffie, Montgomery, Screven, Telfair, Treutlen, Ware, Washington and Wheeler counties for individual, households, debris removal and emergency protective assistance, including direct federal assistance under the Public Assistance program, federal officials said.
The hurricane caused power outages across much of the state. More than 1 million were reported at the peak of outages, but more than half had been resolved by Tuesday. The east of Georgia was still significantly affected by outages Tuesday, with a total of 460,902 power outages reported, according to poweroutage.us.
FEMA also said federal funding would also be available to the state government, eligible local governments and private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis in those counties.
Federal money is also available statewide on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigations, FEMA said.
Residents and business owners who suffered losses in those counties as a result of Hurricane Helene are encouraged to apply for assistance by registering online at DisasterAssistance.gov, calling 1-800-621-3362 or by using the FEMA app. If any of those residents use a relay service like caption telephone service or video relay service, FEMA encourages them to give them the number for that service.
This story was originally published October 1, 2024 at 10:31 AM.
