The Federal Emergency Management Agency has cleared Alabama to receive federal disaster assistance in the aftermath of the April 12 storms that caused heavy flooding and wind damage across Cullman County over this year’s Easter weekend.

Cullman County qualified for public relief assistance for municipalities and service entities, but not for individuals whose property was damaged or destroyed. That’s because the collective dollar amount of local private property damage from the storms simply didn’t meet FEMA’s threshold.

“We’re only declared for public assistance for infrastructure,” explained Cullman County Emergency Management Agency director Phyllis Little. “It’s not individual assistance for homeowners who had damage. We just didn’t have enough uninsured loss to qualify for the claim for individual assistance.”

In addition to more than half a million dollars in damage to county roads and drainage, a substantial portion of the local assistance will go toward compensating the Cullman Electric Cooperative for heavy damage to its line infrastructure. Post-storm assessments placed the value of those losses at $823,000 in May, alongside approximately $11,000 in losses at the Cullman County Water Department, which sustained some broken water lines from uprooted trees.

In all, the damage total exceeded $1.5 million, easily outstripping the local $300,000 threshold established by FEMA to qualify for federal emergency relief.

According to the Red Cross, 62 local privately-owned residences were affected by the April storms, including 51 single-family homes; 11 of which were mobile homes. Of that total, 10 homes and 4 mobile homes had minor damage, 6 homes and 1 mobile home had major damage, and 8 homes and 1 mobile home were destroyed.

Those damages, though, are ineligible for FEMA disaster compensation, since homeowners’ insurance covered most of their value. “The majority of the private property damage our residents had was covered by insurance,” said Little, explaining that insured losses aren’t factored into the dollar amount that FEMA counts toward its damage threshold for private property.

FEMA has named Terry L. Quarles as the Federal Coordinating Officer for federal recovery operations. Quarles said additional FEMA designations could be made at a later date, if the state requests it and additional assessments determine there is a need.