Roswell officials outline $220 million in damage claims, say insurance paid initial losses and FEMA steps next

Roswell has submitted a comprehensive inventory of damages from the recent floods and is moving projects into FEMA’s review pipeline while pursuing state and other funding to cover the federal cost-share, city-contracted disaster consultants told the City Council on May 8.

The consultants said the city’s commercial insurance policies have already paid initial claims and that the city will now route some uninsured or excess costs through FEMA. “Your city had a $10,000,000 flood policy, and that flood policy has been exhausted and paid by commercial insurance,” consultant Deb Gallagher told the council, adding that the city also has a separate fine-arts policy under review.

The consultants said they had initially cataloged roughly 351 damage line items totaling about $220 million and had grouped those into 108 FEMA projects to speed reimbursement. “We have 351 line items. Actually, 350. We took 1 off the list since last week, totaling about $220,000,000,” Jeff McPherson said. He and colleagues described a strategy of grouping some work as smaller projects (under FEMA’s small-project threshold) so the city could receive funds faster while protecting the right to recover…