FEMA Relents, Will Pay for House Bolting

In an unexpected reversal, federal officials announced Monday that they will pay $3 million to 2,000 homeowners whose requests to be reimbursed for retrofitting their homes after the Northridge earthquake had been rejected.

Under a Federal Emergency Management Agency program, the federal government had offered to reimburse homeowners who bolted their homes to foundations to prevent future damage. But thousands of applications were rejected because FEMA officials determined that many homes were previously bolted.

The rejections prompted hundreds of complaints from homeowners who said they were unaware that their homes were already secured to their foundations. In some cases, homeowners said FEMA officials inspected their homes and assured them that they would be reimbursed even though they were already bolted. Others believed their old bolting jobs failed to meet new seismic standards.

Affected homeowners responded to the announcement with some relief but also some lingering resentment.

“I’ve very happy that it’s happened,” said Gloria Van Gieson, who paid a contractor $1,800 to retrofit her North Hills home only to be rejected by FEMA for reimbursement. “But why didn’t this happen before?”

FEMA spokeswoman Vallee Bunting said the agency’s about-face was not an admission that it had erred. But she acknowledged that the agency could have done a better job of informing residents about the program.

“It’s not a situation where we are admitting anything,” she said. “But because of the confusion about what specific work was to be done, we decided to reimburse those applicants.”

The federal coordinating officer, Leland Wilson, said it was important that the federal government support residents who paid for preventive measures.

Some city officials suggested that the decision was politically motivated.

City Councilman Mike Feuer, who represents parts of the San Fernando Valley and worked for months to pressure FEMA to reimburse the rejected homeowners, said he believes the agency reversed itself after top officials in the Clinton administration were told about the complaints.

“I think this had to go to the upper levels of FEMA, which felt that they needed to be responsible,” he said.

Nonetheless, he said he is pleased with the decision.

“I’m elated,” he said. “I think this is a very positive end to a chapter that has plagued many earthquake victims.”

FEMA has so far paid out about $92.5 million to retrofit homes and businesses, and another $23 million to bolt down about 15,000 homes, according to officials.

To qualify for the FEMA reimbursement program, a homeowner had to have at least $100 in earthquake damage and submit an application by July 17, 1995.

But according to some homeowners and city officials, FEMA erred from the start because the agency had no clearly stated policy about bolted homes.

Some rejected homeowners said the agency sent mixed signals early on in the funding program because it approved retrofitting work on some homes that had preexisting bolts, while rejecting others.

As the July 17 deadline approached, however, they said the agency began to tighten the qualifications, thus rejecting more and more homeowners.

FEMA officials agreed to investigate the charges but later said that there was little evidence to back the claims.

At one point, Councilman Hal Bernson, who heads the City Council’s Earthquake Recovery Committee, suggested that a federal grand jury investigate the contractors involved in the dispute.

For homeowners who have been arguing with FEMA for months to get the reimbursement, the turnaround was a bittersweet victory.

Max Danziger, an administrative attorney, paid $1,700 to bolt his Sherman Oaks home to its foundation under the assumption that FEMA would reimburse him for the cost. But when he was rejected, he considered filing a lawsuit.

“It was irritating,” he said. “I spent a mountain of time talking to engineers at FEMA and they wouldn’t respond to my letters.”

Danziger said he even called the agency before he hired the contractor and was told that it would reimburse him for the work even though the house had previously been bolted.

He blames FEMA for the snafu and said he still doesn’t expect to be reimbursed. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.

But other homeowners blame the contractors who did the retrofitting work, saying they should have told the homeowners that their homes already had bolting.