Outreach Efforts Underway in Tornado Ravaged Rural Midwestern and Southern Communities

Tornado damage in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Photo courtesy of America Continental 2000.

An outreach effort is underway to assess the damage and assist rural Midwestern and Southern communities in the wake of the recent deadly tornados, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week.

The current count of confirmed tornados from the March 2nd outbreak stands at 42, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with damage reports coming from: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

To get an idea of the power of the storms, in Jefferson County, Ind. wind speeds ranged from 60 mph to 174 mph, where the National Weather Service reported that a large factory was “cleared to its foundation slab with anchoring bolts bent in the direction of the storm.”

Hundreds of people have been displaced from their homes and officials from USDA Rural Development are now looking for ways to help. In rural communities, the agency is working to provide FEMA with regular information about vacancies in multifamily housing complexes for people that have been displaced by the disasters.

This will be government-funded housing complexes. In cases of disaster, displaced residents can receive priority placement in vacant units.

Other USDA divisions are also involved in the recovery effort. The agency’s food and nutrition service has approved Indiana’s request to operate a ‘disaster supplemental nutrition assistance program’ for six presidentially-declared disaster counties.

The USDA gave one example of how the food is being distributed, saying that in Indiana, approximately 11,000 pounds of USDA food has been provided to the Henryville Community Church in Clarke County to help feed people displaced by the tornadoes. The same assistance program has also been approved for Kentucky, providing hot meals across the state.

Earlier this month, Vilsack announced the availability of $19.7 million in financial and technical assistance through the National Resources Conservation Service’s emergency watershed program to help communities rebuild and repair damages caused by tornadoes, flooding, drought, and other natural disasters.

The Farm Service Agency (FSA) is also providing funds through its emergency loan program to help farmers recover from production and physical losses due to the natural disasters. Farmers will be eligible for these loans if their county is declared a presidential or secretarial disaster county.

FSA Emergency loan funds can be used to restore or replace essential property; pay for all or part of production costs associated with the disaster year; pay essential family living expenses; reorganize the farming operation; and refinance certain debts.

Additionally, the FSA’s emergency conservation program provides emergency funding and technical assistance for farmers and ranchers to rehabilitate farmland damaged by natural disasters and for carrying out emergency water conservation measures in periods of severe drought.

The FSA’s emergency conservation program can also be used to assist with debris removal and repairing damaged farmland, but this is subject to funding availability.

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