Douglas County tallies damage from EF1 tornado in search of federal funds

Douglas County Sheriff's deputies and the Douglas County Office of Emergency Management spent Thursday in the hardest hit areas of their county trying to tally up all the damage from last week's EF1 tornado.

Pairs of deputies and assessors from the DougCo OEM went door to door throughout the county looking for severely damaged homes, including in Highlands Ranch.

This is more than just a blown down fence or uprooted tree. They were looking for structural damage to homes. It seemed they had their hands full.

Their goal is to provide a total damage assessment number in dollars to the State of Colorado who will pass it on to FEMA. FEMA will determine whether the county can be included in the national disaster declaration.

If the county is given the disaster declaration they will get grant money from the federal government to rebuild what was damaged and they say they want that money to rebuild their communities.

"We want to help our citizens as much as possible," said Debrah Schnackenberg the Director of the Office or Emergency Management in the Douglas County Sheriff's Office.

"That declaration would open what's called a public assistance grant and that would help all of our public facilities. It would allow those people to claim reimbursements that would make them whole for uninsured losses," she added.

The DougCo OEM says if you didn't hear from them, don't worry, they should get all the info they need and remind homeowners that while they may also get money from FEMA to reimburse homeowners, for now they need to work with their insurance companies on individual homeowner damage claims.

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