ST. LOUIS – State and federal officials were out assessing the damage left behind from
last week’s storm.

“They’re only looking for uninsured damage because if you have insurance, well, the federal government doesn’t think that that is an unmet need. We’re looking for uninsured damage,” Mike O’Connell, of the Missouri Department of Public Safety, said.

Four people are part of the team, including a representative from the city, SEMA, FEMA and the Small Business Administration.

“They can identify the damage and decide and agree upon this is destroyed, this building, this home, this is major damage or this is minor damage,” O’Connell said. “We can’t just say to FEMA we’ve got a lot of damage; we need help. We have to document it according to their standards and this is the standard: to have these four members on each team go through the damage and agree.”

He said the teams are out assessing for individual assistance.

“We’re moving at a good quick track to try to get the data so that we can get money flowing into individual families so that they have money to help if they need to, to rent a place, to do the home repairs, to replace the food in the refrigerator that was lost,” O’Connell said.