Placer County Residents/Businesses May Apply For Assistance Following New Year's Weekend Storms

Updated 2/17/06

Placer County homeowners, renters and non-farm businesses that experienced uninsured losses because of storms and power outages New Year's weekend are eligible to apply for Small Business Administration (SBA) disaster assistance.

People in Placer County are eligible because of an SBA declaration of adverse impacts of the storm to Washoe County, in the State of Nevada, a county contiguous to Placer.

This assistance, generally in the form of long-term, low-interest loans, can cover either physical or economic injury losses. Physical losses in Placer County have included such things as flooded equipment and water damage to buildings. Such things as the closure of businesses, loss of sales and spoiled food due to the storms or power outages comprise economic injury losses.

People wishing to apply for assistance should contact the Small Business Administration at 1-800-659-2955, or TTY 1-800-877-8339 (for people with hearing or speech impairments). Callers should reference "Nevada's severe storm/flooding event", or "Disaster Declaration 10370" for physical damage or "Disaster Declaration 10371" for economic injury. The storm-related losses must have occurred between Dec. 30, 2005 and January 4, 2006. Contact by phone is mandatory to begin the application process, however some information about the process may be available on the SBA web site, www.sba.gov/disaster_recov/index.html. Homeowners, renters and non-farm businesses in all parts of Placer County are eligible to apply. In the days following the storms, those affected were asked to call one of several local government agencies to report their losses. Callers should now call SBA instead, and should apply whether they had previously contacted Placer County or not. Loan applications for physical damage are due April 11, 2006, while loan applications for economic injury are due Nov. 13, 2006.

Following the storms, Placer County declared a local state of emergency, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had included Placer in a state declaration of emergency. This state declaration made local government, such as the county, cities and special districts, eligible for some kinds of state assistance with such things as debris removal, emergency response and infrastructure repair costs the government incurred. Nearly $2 million in estimated local losses have been identified so far, primarily to local government infrastructure.