When One Door Closes
The Opening of a Disaster Recovery Center
Devil's Lake, ND 5/18/2009
Gov. John Hoeven
00:11:19 The purpose of this center is to make sure we are helping people and business that are impacted by the flooding. Under the Presidential Disaster Declaration, we also got what's called Individual Assistance. The standard assistance you get with a Presidential Disaster Declaration is called Public Assistance. That's dealt with roads and bridges and other public infrastructure.  And as everyone knows up here, that's a lot of impact to those things. So were working with not only with FEMA on the Public Assistance side but then also through state funding and local efforts to make sure we're building up roads, dikes, levies um, ah, bridges. Doing all things that need to be done to maintain the infrastructure. And in our legislative session this year we passed a 1.35 billion dollar transportation package to help on the road side and we passed 310 million dollar water package to help with the ah, the diking and levying, levies and those kinds of things. We're hard at work on that side but at the same time we've got to been helping people that are impacted. That's what the Disaster Recovery Center is all about. 
Ken Jordan
01:18:22 FEMA's role when we come in is to supplement the government, local government and the state government. What we're doing here in this Disaster Recovery Center is a place to answer question. Where you can sit down, across a table, face to face with individuals and find out how our FEMA programs work and also how SBA works and we also have state representatives here who can talk to you about state programs. 
Gov. John Hoeven
01:48:13 So far statewide with the, with the flooding we've, ah, had through out the state, more than 4400 people have registered for assistance. And through these Disaster Recovery Center we've provided more than 5.7 million dollars to individuals and businesses for assistance. So we encourage people to call in, to go on the web, or simple to come in here to the Armory in Devil's Lake or the Dakota Tribal Industries on the Spirit Lake Nation.
For more information, visit
www.fema.gov