Updated at 4:25 p.m.: Revised to include additional comments and information.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has rejected Texas’ request for a major disaster declaration – denying it millions of dollars in federal relief funding – over the destructive October tornadoes that smashed through Dallas County.

FEMA administrator Pete Gaynor told Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in a March 31 letter, obtained by The Dallas Morning News, that the “damage from this event was not of such severity and magnitude as to be beyond the capabilities of the state and affected local governments.”

Abbott is working on an appeal, his office confirmed on Tuesday.

“We will work with the city of Dallas, the school district up there and everyone else involved to do all we can to get FEMA approval of the disaster declaration,” Abbott spokesman John Wittman said.

FEMA’s decision strikes a particular blow now that North Texas, like the rest of the country, is dealing with the debilitating coronavirus pandemic, which has further strained state and local resources as the public health crisis has also evolved into a severe economic slowdown.

The state had estimated that the October storms caused upwards of $190 million in public infrastructure damage in Dallas County.

If FEMA had approved Abbott’s major disaster declaration request, Texas would’ve been eligible for a 75% reimbursement, meaning that the region could’ve tapped into millions of dollars – and perhaps tens of millions of dollars – from the agency’s disaster relief fund.

The letter from Gaynor doesn’t spell out the exact reason for the rejection.

But Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson wrote in a letter to Dallas City Council member Lee Kleinman, who represents one of the hardest hit areas, that it “appears to have been based on insufficient documentation related to damage of Dallas Independent School District properties."

The mayor expressed his “surprise and deep disappointment in FEMA’s decision.”

Another factor in FEMA’s denial was the agency “putting different costs that we incurred in different buckets,” said Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas. That approach resulted in the region falling short of the threshold to receive aid, he said.

“The formulation FEMA is using is wrong,” Allred said. “We desperately need this money. ... Now especially with the strain that municipalities are under trying to deal with the COVID crisis, that is the exact timing to not pull back on helping recover from the tornado.”

Destruction and debris from the October 2019 tornado remains on Glenrio Lane in Dallas on Monday, April 7, 2020. (Lynda M. Gonzalez / Staff Photographer)

A FEMA spokesman said the agency urges the city and state to "take advantage of the appeals process and submit any additional documentation of uninsured loss or unmet needs caused by the storms so FEMA can reconsider the request for a major disaster declaration.”

Texas officials have been trying to sort through the issue with FEMA for months.

North Texas needed to have sustained $38.5 million in uninsured losses to public infrastructure to qualify for a disaster declaration. Despite Texas’ estimates that the damage far exceeded that amount, FEMA in late January had validated only about $33 million.

Johnson even met with Gaynor in Washington in January to press the region’s case.

“As I had expressed to FEMA Administrator Peter Gaynor in Washington earlier this year, Dallas needs support — in the form of a return of some of our federal tax dollars — to recover fully,” Johnson wrote in the letter to Kleinman.

Kleinman said on Tuesday that FEMA’s rejection came as a surprise to him based on the estimated costs that city and DISD officials had provided.

“We really anticipated that we were in good shape with that,” Kleinman said. “We thought we were going to exceed the $38.5 million threshold pretty easily.”

But Kleinman said he’s optimistic about the appeal. Dwayne Thompson, DISD’s chief financial officer, provided city officials on Tuesday with more documents that support additional claims they’ll send to FEMA this week, Kleinman said.

The holdup from Dallas schools was a lag in time for the final determination by the district’s insurance company, Thompson said.

Cary Middle School was deemed a total loss soon after the storm. But the district was negotiating with insurance over how much should be covered for significant damages at Walnut Hill Elementary School and Thomas Jefferson High School.

The cost to rebuild the high school and a new prekindergarten through eighth grade campus -- to cover both Walnut Hill and Cary -- is estimated to be $131.9 million.

A tree was slammed against Cary Middle School in Dallas by a tornado, Monday, October 21, 2019. The walls to art rooms (right) caved in. (Tom Fox / Staff Photographer)

Thompson said it wasn’t until late Monday that DISD received the insurance provider’s final total of what the company would pay out for the three schools: $66.5 million. That leaves about $65 million that DISD officials need to make up after insurance.

“We did not have any documentation that we did not provide to FEMA when they asked for it,” said Thompson, who explained that DISD initially believed the total for Cary’s loss alone would be enough to qualify for federal aid.

Without the FEMA funding, the city could also see $25 million to $30 million of infrastructure damage that officials would pay for out of the city’s operating budget, Kleinman said. Fire stations, for example, also sustained substantial uninsured damage.

Council member Jennifer Staubach Gates, whose northwest Dallas district was also hit hard by the tornado, said she was disappointed by FEMA’s rejection. But this won’t change the city’s plans to redress the devastation, she said.

“We have to move forward with repairing infrastructure damage,” Gates said.

In its effort to win federal aid, the region has received substantial backup at the congressional level.

Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, both Republicans, wrote to President Donald Trump in support of the declaration. As did a group of House members, including Allred; Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, Van Taylor, R-Plano; and Roger Williams, R-Austin.

Allred said he planned to lead another letter with those lawmakers in support of Abbott’s appeal.

A Cornyn aide said the senator supports Abbott’s effort, adding that he is “exploring other options to help Texas secure this much-needed federal assistance.” A Cruz spokesperson said he will "continue working to ensure North Texas communities have the resources they need to move forward.”

Johnson, the dean of the Texas congressional delegation, said she was “disappointed” by FEMA’s decision, though she added that the agency has generally “been pretty fair.”

Complicating matters is that FEMA is now also one of the lead federal agencies over the coronavirus response.

Trump in mid-March made a national emergency declaration over COVID-19. Later in the month, he approved Texas’ major disaster declaration request over the outbreak, allowing federal relief dollars to start flowing toward the state and local response on that front.

Staff writer Tom Benning reported from Washington, while Hayat Norimine and Eva-Maria Ayala reported from Dallas.