Five months after the rain stopped, still no FEMA aid for museum

In the wake of the March floods, when I saw that Federal Emergency Management assistance had been approved for Connecticut, I called up to report that I lost a motor on my furnace to rising basement floodwaters.

FEMA kindly sent out a representative, a clipboard-carrying woman who had no interest in seeing the receipt from my oil company for the new motor. But she did take a picture of my furnace and remarked about a stain on the wall that showed how high the water had risen.

A short time later, FEMA zapped $680 into my bank account. I am not sure how they arrived at that number, although it was actually pretty close to what I had spent on the flood, including both the new furnace motor and a pump from Home Depot.

I couldn't help but recall my easy money from FEMA the other day, as I stood chatting inside the Indian & Colonial Research Center building in Old Mystic with museum president Joan Cohn. We had to speak over the sound of two ordinary house fans, still trying to dry things out.

Cohn's experience with FEMA couldn't have been more different than mine.

She shared some of the horror stories - she has two thick file folders cataloguing all her long meetings, phone calls and applications for assistance - as we chatted inside the main office of the main ICRC building, an 1856 red brick building that is a landmark in Old Mystic.

The ICRC has remained closed since the flood and has not received one penny from FEMA.

The bulk of the museum's collection, materials on Colonial and Indian culture in early eastern Connecticut, is fortunately being stored, at no cost, at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.

Cohn, a genial woman in her 70s who has volunteered her time as president of the small museum for the last 20 years, seems justifiably fed up with the FEMA red tape. She told me she has spent many long days at her home computer, from 9 in the morning until 9 at night, trying to sort things out.

She's actually gone through two FEMA representatives, one from New Hampshire and one from Cape Cod, who both came and went, processing a lot of paperwork, without securing any money for repairs.

The one from New Hampshire actually donated $100 of his own money to the museum before leaving. Cohn figures he might have felt guilty.

Cohn tried to get some help from U.S. Rep. Joseph Courtney but was told by someone in his office that FEMA was doing all they could.

She also had to shut down two dehumidifiers when she got a monthly electric bill for more than $200. She called Connecticut Light & Power to see if anyone there could help. They offered to put the museum on a budget plan. She unplugged instead.

The good news is that museum members responded generously to a plea for help. Cohn has carefully logged and deposited close to $7,000 in donations that will be dedicated to repairs.

A lot of Old Mystic neighbors who attended a flood cleanup day have also signed up to help work when repairs at the museum get under way. Cohn has secured that list, too.

As the result of all her FEMA negotiations and applications and interviews, Cohn has secured approvals for what might turn out to be as much as $17,000 in aid, although much of that, she says, would probably depend on Congress approving more flood assistance money.

Meanwhile, she was notified recently by a confusing letter from the state Department of Emergency Management that $1,300 in FEMA money, for bins and boxes for collection materials, might be available soon.

Trouble is the collection is not ready to be moved back into the still damp building. Also, like all the money that will be channeled through the state, Cohn assumes the museum will have to produce careful receipts and records of everything purchased to get checks. That will complicate instances where things are donated.

If the balance of the FEMA money ever becomes available, it still won't be enough to raise the floor of the museum's flood-prone addition, which Cohn said the center's directors wish to accomplish. The proposed FEMA funding includes money for repair materials, like insulation and sheetrock, but not labor, Cohn said.

Another problem she has had with FEMA is getting credit for all the volunteer hours people have donated to the museum to count as matching money. If the museum staff were paid, the match would have been automatic and easy.

Cohn was also made to apply for a Small Business Administration loan, just so the museum could be turned down, as she knew it would be.

Something is terribly broken in the way that FEMA does business, if they can quickly drop money into the bank accounts of hardly struggling homeowners like myself but create so many obstacles for a worthy nonprofit like the Indian & Colonial Research Center.

It is also shameful that the local congressman has done nothing to help this museum reopen, five months after the rain stopped.

This is the opinion of David Collins.