Reservations brace for winter storms amid slow recovery

By STEPHEN GROVES
40 minutes ago

PINE RIDGE, S.D. (AP) — Snow blanketed the living room of Erna Shepard’s home the morning after a storm on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

“I’m going to freeze,” she said.

It’s been 10 months since the “bomb cyclone” that dumped the snow and rain that Shepard, 48, says caused the roof of her mobile home to cave in. While she’s managed to find a temporary home with her sister, like many people living in several Native American communities in South Dakota, she has struggled to recover from a storm and flooding that swelled rivers, swallowed roads and stranded thousands of people.

“The harsh thing about these climate-related events is that when they happen to these communities, we don’t recover really,” said Chase Iron Eyes, a spokesman for the Oglala Sioux Tribe’s elected leadership.

It’s a compounding problem: Year after year, storms batter roads and homes, but federal recovery funding is restricted to damage from a single disaster and a specific timeframe. Unable to prove that the damage they’ve experienced was caused by just one event, residents and officials are left without the help they need to fix their homes and roads.

https://apnews.com/b307199acc16df3034413af20ced3588

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She applied for assistance from FEMA, but was denied.

FEMA spokesman Phil Wernisch said he can’t talk about individual cases, but he noted that previous disasters have occurred on the reservation and this help was only for damage from March and April flooding.

Hey Wernsisch................resign, your a disgrace................. maybe you and your orange hair buddy can go to the reservation and throw paper towels........................


November 3, 2020 cannot get here fast enough................