Starke County Highway Department Anticipates Visit from FEMA

Posted on July 5, 2018
Author Anita Goodan, WKVI

FEMA representatives will be visiting the Starke County Highway Department for a site visit next week to assess paperwork and damage repair from flooding that occurred in February.

Highway Superintendent Rik Ritzler told the commissioners on Monday night that it should be a good visit.

“They will be meeting us at our office on July 10 at 10 a.m. CT,” said Ritzler. “We will know better then, but it’s optimistic. It looks like we’re getting a pretty good reimbursement. I hate to tell you how much because I’m not sure yet, but it sounds good.”

Ritzler said the crews are working hard to get repairs done prior to the visit.

“They revised our estimates. They told us that all of the work that we have completed already they’re not going to come and inspect. So, they’re only going to inspect the roads we haven’t done yet. We have been busy doing those roads. As of the phone call, we had about 60 percent of the road repairs completed. As of today, we’re about 75 percent. By the 10th, we hope to be at about 90 percent so they’ll only have a couple of roads to inspect.”

While Ritzler is hesitant to give out any reimbursement figures, he believes it will be healthy.

“We can either submit a reimbursement for direct administrative costs with the actual hours or five percent of our damages and our damages total almost $1 million. We’d get about $50,000 which is good. We put in a lot of time but not quite that much time so that could be a good reimbursement as well.”

The flooding event closed 63 miles of roads in Starke County while 18 culverts were damaged. Nine of those culverts are now repaired. No bridges were damaged.

With the department’s concentrated effort to complete flood damaged areas, normal paving operations are a bit delayed. Ritzler expects to turn to the second phase of paving in the next few days.