FEMA Offers Assistance To Storm Victims In Muskogee County

FEMA is going door to door Tuesday in Muskogee County looking for people with damage from the floods in May.

Some of the people in this area were really hit hard by the floods and many of them still need help to this day. Ralph Blankenship lives in Muskogee and says his house has never seen flooding this bad.

“We’ve been here, I think, about 30 years, and we’ve only got about an inch of water, just barely, in the house all this time,” said Blankenship. “Then this rain came, 2 feet deep at least, all the way through the house.”

FEMA went to some of the neighborhoods with the most damage and helped people sign up for government assistance. They want people to be aware of all the options out there.

“For this disaster declaration, individual assistance programs have been activated to help the citizens of Oklahoma recover from those storms,” said Juan Ayala with FEMA. “We have rental assistance available, as well as home repair assistance available, to help people get back to where they were before the storm.”

FEMA says it’s important to register even if you don’t think you will get anything.

"It's very expensive to recover from a significant flood in your home,” said Ayala. “A lot of expenses people have incurred, maybe they've done the repairs, they still may be eligible for reimbursement for those repairs. So do yourself a favor and apply for FEMA assistance to see what you might be eligible for."

Blankenship applied for FEMA assistance a week ago, and he is grateful for their help.

“They’ve helped out, they sent a checkout, and they called and said they would do more things,” said Blankenship. “And said they would actually buy us three years of flood insurance. We don’t have any flood insurance because it’s difficult to get.”

After FEMA wraps in Muskogee County, FEMA will be going door to door in Tulsa County too.