The number appeared unfair to Robert Witt.

The former president of the University of Alabama and chancellor of the chancellor of the University of Alabama System could not understand why the tornado damage in the small Pickens County community of Sapps must reach $5 million before federal aid could be sought.

He referenced a March 29, 2016, story in The Tuscaloosa News regarding disaster relief efforts for Sapps. Sixty-eight homes -- 35 of which were uninsured -- were damaged or destroyed by an EF-2 tornado that struck Feb. 2, 2016.

After the tornado, it had become a repeated refrain: Because the total cost of destruction did not exceed $5 million, the community did not qualify for disaster relief assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

To Witt, who now works part-time as a professor in the University of Alabama’s Honors College, this didn’t seem fair.

“Sapps is basically a very low-income area,” said Witt, who became familiar with the area while chairing United Way campaigns for a nine-county area in West Alabama. “It’s a low income neighborhood and they talked about the federal minimum threshold.”

So, Witt sent some letters.

He began with U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby and former Sen. Jeff Sessions.

His point was simple: had the tornado struck an affluent area of the state, $5 million in damage would be reached fairly quickly.

But because the area was poor and rural, why should this number be so arbitrarily applied?

“To think of 60 some odd families, people who probably don’t have cash reserves to draw on. Their homes weren’t insured – how do you bounce back from that?,” Witt said. “If that same tornado had hit Indian Hills (Country Club) or (the affluent Birmingham suburb of) Mountain Brook, they would be getting help.

“There’s something wrong, if that’s what the truth is, and someone should take a look at that policy.”

Turns out, that wasn’t the truth of the matter at all.

No request received

Sessions, now the U.S. Attorney General, forwarded his letter from Witt to FEMA.

In less than two months, the federal agency had sent Witt its response and it contained one descriptive reason why Sapps received no federal aid.

“(W)e did not receive a request for a major disaster declaration from the governor following the early February 2016 tornadoes,” wrote Terry L. Quarles, the recovery division director for FEMA’s Region IV, which covers Alabama.

According to FEMA’s Region IV, the $5 million damage limit that became part of the common conversation following the Sapps tornado originated from FEMA’s requirements for public assistance, which goes toward local governments to assist with the recovery from natural disasters.

That limit is actually $6.7 million and fluctuates by state and yearly updates from the U.S. Department of Labor’s consumer price index, which reflects “changes in the prices paid by urban consumers for a representative basket of goods and services,” according to the department’s website.

But for individual assistance, which is the FEMA program that could have benefitted the Sapps residents, there is no financial threshold, said Mary Hudak, spokeswoman for FEMA’s Region IV.

To award individual assistance, FEMA first needs a request for a major disaster declaration from a state’s governor.

This request comes after state agencies examine the afflicted area for a number of factors, from the income levels of the area to what sort of housing alternatives exist, what assistance already has been provided – insurance proceeds, for example – and what an area’s unmet needs are.

“They do a complete kind of 360-degree profile of the whole thing,” Hudak said. “During that process, a governor, along with other state and local officials, make a determination as to whether this is beyond the capability of the state.”

From there, if it’s determined that the state and local resources will not be sufficient to manage the recovery, the state turns to FEMA.

The federal agency then takes the state’s disaster relief application and forwards it, along with data on the area’s population, its socioeconomic status, the scale of the damage and other factors, to the President of the United States, and it’s the President who makes the final determination on whether an area will receive individual assistance through FEMA.

And this final decision is different for every state and every situation, Hudak said.

“For example, smaller, less wealthy states would have a lower threshold to meet,” Hudak said.

Guidance and assessments

The first time Cynthia Simpson heard that the Alabama EMA opted not to seek federal aid for Sapps was when she was contacted by The Tuscaloosa News.

Simpson serves as executive director of the Pickens County Community Action Committee, a group that joined up with other agencies to form Unmet Needs Committee, a contingent of political and religious leaders from around Pickens County to foster aid for the tornado victims.

Because her group already was a certified non-profit organization, it managed the private donations that were made to aid the Sapps residents and property owners.

To date, the Pickens County Community Action Committee has received $51,814 in donations and distributed $25,341 of it for home repairs.

“I believed that whatever funding could be applied for or secured had been secured, and if we didn’t receive any, I was under the impression that we did not qualify for it,” Simpson said. “We are advocates for our low-income people and those who are in crisis in the community and I was unaware that different resources had not been applied for.”

FEMA allows for 30 days beyond the date of a disaster to seek individual financial assistance, so these residents are no longer eligible.

The Alabama Emergency Management Agency said it chose not to recommend Gov. Robert Bentley seek federal assistance because of guidelines provided by FEMA, said Greg Robinson, public information officer for the Alabama EMA.

He said the state EMA relied on a recommendation contained within the federal assistance guidelines that indicated the damage in Sapps would not be eligible.

“That decision was basically made based on the fact that when we made the assessments, we knew from the FEMA guidance that it wouldn’t be approved,” Robinson said. “Our decision was based on assessments.”

The “guidance” that Robinson is alluding to is based on the average amount of assistance per disaster according to FEMA statistics compiled during a five-year period between July 1994 and July 1999.

Based on these guidelines, a disaster in a state of Alabama’s population – about 4.9 million people – needed an average total of 582 damaged homes, $4.6 million in housing assistance and more than 2,700 applications for disaster housing, among other factors.

Federal loans and ‘trust’

With the damage in Sapps coming nowhere near those recommended limits, the state EMA urged Bentley to seek assistance instead from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

And, since that time, a total of $296,400 in disaster loans through the SBA have been approved for the repair of five homes for the homes damaged in Pickens County, said Ray Harbour, the public affairs specialist for SBA’s Office of Disaster Assistance in Atlanta.

But the guidelines that led the Alabama EMA to turn only to the SBA aren’t hard and fast rules, like those governing the public assistance funds.

However, Hudak said the Alabama EMA has an experienced staff and she declined to question why it did not seek federal aid for the Sapps residents.

“One thing we never do is speculate because we don’t make the determination. We provide the additional information and move the governor’s request forward,” Hudak said. “But I trust that the decision of the Alabama Emergency Management Agency made in this situation was the correct one.”

Reach Jason Morton at jason.morton@tuscaloosanews.com or 205-722-0200.