PUNTA GORDA\u00a0\u2014 Federal officials arrived in Punta Gorda on Wednesday to announce “delayed” disaster reimbursements are heading to Florida\u00a0\u2014 including $64 million for Charlotte County.\u00a0<\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Greg Steube and Sen. Ashley Moody, along with a bevy of local and state officials, spoke at a news conference to detail some of the funds that, in some cases, go back to Hurricane Irma back in 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cCharlotte County has waited years for the money FEMA already agreed to pay. That\u2019s not how disaster recovery is supposed to work,\u201d Steube stated in a news release. \u201cI\u2019m grateful to President (Donald) Trump, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and FEMA for helping cut through the bureaucracy and get these long-overdue dollars moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moody noted Florida will receive its $1.8 billion in FEMA disaster reimbursements.<\/p>\n
Officials said the “historic achievement” was\u00a0“largely possible thanks to the Trump Administration\u2019s efforts to clear FEMA\u2019s disaster reimbursement backlog,” according to the news release.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFlorida has been waiting on essential disaster assistance funds for hurricane recovery since 2017\u2014 I’ve been in the Senate for less than a year and a half and have worked hard to bring nearly $2 billion of outstanding FEMA funds back home to Florida,” Moody stated in the news release. “I\u2019ll continue fighting to deliver the federal support Floridians need while making the disaster recovery process more transparent, efficient, and accountable.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
While some of the outstanding reimbursements go back to 2017, much of the funding was from Hurricane Ian recovery projects after it struck the region in 2022.<\/p>\n
The officials noted in the news release that\u00a0 disaster recovery funding for Florida has accelerated in recent months, with FEMA \u00a0announcing “an additional $124 million in funding for 70 disaster recovery and hazard mitigation projects,” it stated. That brings the agency\u2019s total support to more than $1.2 billion in the past 90 days, the news release stated.<\/p>\n
“That funding has supported communities recovering from Hurricanes Helene, Milton, and other recent natural disasters,” it stated.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUNTA GORDA\u00a0\u2014 Federal officials arrived in Punta Gorda on Wednesday to announce “delayed” disaster reimbursements are heading to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210],"class_list":["post-333647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}