Pelosi Tours Storm-Damaged East Haven Shoreline

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi visited East Haven’s hardest hit shoreline neighborhood Friday to view first-hand the damage from Tropical Storm Irene.

Pelosi brought national politics with her when she took the occasion to urge approval by the House of Representatives of a bill passed Thursday by the U.S. Senate authorizing an extra $6.9 billion in disaster funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Republicans in the House have proposed only $1 billion, and demand that it be accompanied by $1.5 billion in cuts to the federal Energy Department.

Pelosi, the leader of the Democrats in the House, said Republicans have never demanded "offset" spending cuts in the past, especially when natural disasters occurred in their states.

She also noted that not all Republicans are demanding offset spending cuts. "There are some Republicans in Congress who say let’s just get this money to people in a bipartisan way," she said.

In East Haven, she was confronted by a more immediate concern for local residents of Cosey Beach Road, who have found that FEMA assistance is only available for primary residences.

Although many of the beachfront homes damaged by the storm on Aug. 28 were second homes, the families lived in them half the year and the structures had been in their families for several generations in some cases.

Residents also complained that their homeowner’s insurance company and their flood insurance company are delaying payments while they disagree whether the damage was caused by high winds or flood waters.

In the meantime, residents said scavengers and looters are sneaking into the neighborhood and stealing damaged appliances to sell as scrap metal, and there is a noticeable increase in the rat population in the neighborhood.

John Dobbins, one of the beach residents, said he is concerned because FEMA might require him to raise his house to be eligible for aid for rebuilding, although town officials warned that the structure might fall apart if he attempted to raise it.

Accompanying Pelosi on the tour were East Haven Mayor April Capone, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and Lieutenant Gov. Nancy Wyman. Also on hand for a briefing were a number of top officials of the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (DEMHS) and the FEMA disaster recovery team for Connecticut.

FEMA has accepted over 3,600 applications for assistance and distributed more than $2 million in aid since the storm, according to Stephen M. DeBlasio Sr., who heads up the agency’s recovery operations in Connecticut.

He said the agency has never been as short of funds as it is now, and it has cut spending on low-priority projects to make sure it won’t run out of emergency recovery funding for natural disasters.

DEMHS Commissioner Peter Boynton said one reason the storm was so destructive was that its strongest winds and storm surge came at the peak of the highest tide of the month, the new moon tide.

The briefing took place at the town’s beach facility, which has been taken over by FEMA for processing disaster recovery applications.

Capone supported the residents’ plea for aid even though many of the damaged homes were family beach homes, not primary residences.

"These are working class people," she said, explaining that East Haven is one of the few places where working class families can afford a summer home at the beach.

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