SALON

Sunday, Nov 18, 2012 3:45 PM UTC

Left with tornado damage, Ala town blaming FEMA

By

Topics: From the Wires,

CORDOVA, Ala. (AP) — Main Street in this old mill town looks about the same as it did the day after tornadoes killed about 250 people across Alabama a year and a half ago: Battered red bricks and broken glass litter the pavement, and the buildings still standing are rickety and roofless.

The entire one-block downtown, still deemed unsafe, remains sealed off by a chain-link fence. City officials blame the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying the money to demolish skeletons of the old buildings is mired in miles of red tape.

When one request for photos or historical documentation is met, FEMA makes another, the mayor and others in this town of 2,100 say. One crop of workers is replaced by another, forcing locals to constantly explain their problems to new people.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Mayor Drew Gilbert, a 25-year-old Cordova native who served on the City Council before taking office this month. “You would think it’s been touched and seen now by everyone who needs to touch and see it.”

On April 27, 2011, dozens of tornadoes ripped across the southeast, spawned by freakish weather. Hundreds were killed and thousands of homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed, causing more than $1 billion in damage.

While cleanup and demolition projects are moving along in devastated communities like Tuscaloosa and Hackleburg — where wrecked homes and businesses are mostly gone and new ones are slowly being built — Cordova’s downtown stands out as an eerie reminder of the destruction.

FEMA officials say they’re only doing their job in Cordova, documenting damaged buildings and covering all the details before providing money to tear them down.

“This project involves demolition of multiple historically significant structures and requires that FEMA consider all pertinent environmental and historic preservation laws before funding the project,” the agency said in response to questions from The Associated Press.

Yet the process has been baffling not just for local residents but to the head of historic preservation for the state, Elizabeth Brown.

“I think FEMA needs to give their people in the field more latitude,” said Brown, preservation officer for the Alabama Historical Commission. “It seems things have to keep going back up the chain.”

Brown said the demolition process seems to be taking longer than usual in Cordova, but government rules don’t set out a strict timetable for such decisions since needs and damage can vary so greatly from one place to another. Town leaders say FEMA has never given them a firm timetable.

Located in coal country about 35 miles northwest of Birmingham, Cordova began in the 1880s at a spot where two railroad lines converged. A textile mill operated in town for about seven decades before closing in 1962.

The mill’s failure displaced 800 workers and sent Cordova into a tailspin. Most of the 19 or so buildings in the downtown block were vacant and deteriorating by the time the twisters struck last year.

Many people left town for work in metro Birmingham or nearby Jasper before the twisters, and there are even fewer jobs in Cordova now aside from schools, a bank, a pharmacy and a health clinic. The town’s sole grocery store was wiped out and has yet to reopen; a convenience store near the battered downtown block has closed, too.

Cordova Fire Chief Dean Harbison, who also serves as the town’s recovery coordinator, said FEMA was helpful at first.

“They’ve provided us some money,” Harbison said. “But as far as recovery, they’ve slowed us down.”

A long-term plan sponsored by FEMA initially recommended reclaiming downtown Cordova, but Haribson said an in-depth examination revealed major structural problems and city officials decided to demolish the entire block.

The mix of privately and publicly owned buildings with shared walls and varying amounts of damage proved confusing.

“You’d think they’ve encountered that before,” Gilbert said. “But it’s been a problem.”

Town leaders didn’t anticipate historical considerations being the main roadblock to demolition because the damaged buildings weren’t on state or national historic registers, but FEMA started asking for photos and reports documenting the buildings’ past and architecture, Harbison said.

After two rounds of requests and a conference call, FEMA finally sent its own photographer to document what’s left of the city on Oct. 29, he said.

“They’re saying they should be finished with the review by Jan. 4,” said Harbison. That means no decision will be made on whether to fund the demolition will be made for at least two more months, he said, and the two-year anniversary of the tornadoes could pass with the fractured buildings still looming over Cordova.

It’s hard to come or go from the town without driving past the decimated area, and the mayor said the sight is a mental barrier to moving the city forward. Three fires have burned in the damaged area since the tornadoes — one accidental, two suspected arsons, including one in which two people were charged — and the blazes further weakened structures blasted by the twisters.

Gilbert said the rickety buildings stand in an area that could become a home for new businesses now that a new four-lane highway linking Birmingham and Memphis, Tenn., runs just a few miles from the city, but that can’t happen until the old ones are demolished. The struggling city can’t afford the estimated $933,000 cost of demolishing the structures, he said, so it’s counting on FEMA to fill the gap.

“Our entire economy is gone, and it’s like they’re just doing nothing,” said Gilbert.

FEMA spokesman Danon Lucas said that’s not true.

“I know the city looks at it as delays, but we have been working through the process that’s required,” he said. “This doesn’t happen often. Demolition like this isn’t a regular occurrence.”

No other Alabama city has had the same problem since the twisters, Brown said. While it took about a year to approve the demolition of the high school in the northwest Alabama town of Phil Campbell because of historical considerations, Cordova is in a league of its own, she said.

“I can’t blame them for being frustrated with FEMA,” she said.

More Jay Reeves.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
185 points186 points | 7 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
135 points136 points | comment
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
42 points43 points | 8 comments
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
23 points24 points | 16 comments
vote
Obstruction Will Ruin GOP - Playing politics & abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
15 points16 points | comment

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations