Here’s Horry County’s plan to get the most federal funds for Hurricane Florence relief

Horry County staff is working to help people recover from Florence and prepare for future floods. The hope is to save time, money and effort by asking federal agencies to break with tradition and deal directly with Horry County.

Typically, FEMA and federal relief dollars get allocated to individual states. From there, they’re sent to reimburse the local governments, like Horry County, for their expenses in directly dealing with the storm. This helps deal with damage across counties and towns.

Since most of the damage from Hurricane Florence happened in Horry, according to Horry County Community Development Director Courtney Kain, the county government should be able to deal directly with the federal government in seeking aid dollars to help locals recover from previous floods and to prepare for future events.

The Administrative Committee of Horry County Council met for the first time this year on Tuesday to receive an update from Kain on the Flood Resiliency Plan currently being drafted by county staff. No action was taken on the plan at Tuesday’s meeting. The presentation was an update detailing the work completed and outlining what would happen next.

Kain’s office applies for grants and governmental funding to increase the quality of life in Horry. Given how routine flooding is making certain areas of the county difficult to live in, her staff is tasked with creating a plan to help locals better prepare and recover from flooding. Resources, however, are tight and federal money can be challenging to get and effectively use.

The plan started as a resolution from county council back in September at a meeting following Hurricane Florence. At the time, it was said the FEMA money potentially available to the county would not be enough to buy out every one of the over 2,000 homes damaged during the flood.

Assistant County Administrator Justin Powell said the county needed to be strategic on where and how it moved past Hurricane Florence given the limited resources. The key points looking forward are to address what went wrong in Florence and how to avoid it in the future. This includes roadway disconnection and repeated flooding in certain neighborhoods like Rosewood in Socastee and Bucksport off Highway 701.

Kaine said these conversations have to be localized for each community. The needs of Socastee are different from those of Bucksport, and the plan should reflect these differences, she said. This is why she and Powell said Horry County Council members should push elected officials in Columbia and Washington, D.C., to advocate for Horry County being able to deal directly with grant-giving agencies like FEMA or HUD.

“We really need to take the lead,” Kain said.

Disaster relief funding from FEMA will be integral to the plan. This includes seeking individual and public assistance, as well as hazard mitigation. The FEMA buy-out program is a flood-prevention measure that looks to reduce the amount of homes in harm’s way. That said, FEMA provides limited resources.

Kain said the plan will look to draw from across government agencies to get more aid into the pocket of Horry residents. Council member Cam Crawford asked how many people who applied for FEMA money after previous hurricanes would be affected in re-applying. Kain said diversifying relief funding could help offset some of the challenges of acquiring and affording to take a FEMA buy-out.

The Housing and Urban Development Department provides Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery dollars, which could give Horry County more flexibility in creating a flood resiliency plan. Congress allocated $1.6 billion in CDBG-DR for all 2018 disasters. The county will create an unmeant needs study, and then determine what is the priority when the federal dollars come.

“We think and we hope that Florence will be one of the major disasters that receives some of those dollars,” Kaine said.

The hope is to have a functioning plan by the fall, including policy guidelines and directions to help offset the increasing cost of flood recovery with nationally available grants.

This story was originally published January 29, 2019 at 4:25 PM.