FEMA reports that verdict still out on whether it will pay to rebuild flood-damaged Central Fire Station on a new site

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has not yet concluded that the city can rebuild its flood-damaged Central Fire Station at 222 Third St. NW on a different site.

Greg Eyerly, the city's flood-recovery director, on Tuesday said he had assumed that it was a “slam dunk” that the city could rebuild the station at a new site after FEMA determined that the station sustained damage greater than 50 percent of the building's value.

“Now we understand it is not a slam dunk,” Eyerly said.

Eyerly was commenting at a weekly meeting that few realize still occurs in which city, federal and state officials meet to address the progress of the city's flood recovery.

At Tuesday's meeting, Todd Dolphin, FEMA's Public Assistance Group branch director for Iowa, noted that he still has to figure out a way to make a case to FEMA's regional administrator in Kansas City to agree to provide additional funding so the city can rebuild on another site.

Dolphin told Eyerly and eight others at the table that one problem is that the Central Fire Station sits in the 500-year flood plain, although much around it is in the 100-year flood plain.

He said the city's argument for a new site would be helped if they could make the case that the current site has been or will be subject to “repeatable heavy damage.”

Dolphin wondered if the Central Fire Station received any damage in the city's flooding in 1993, and Eyerly said city staff would do some checking.

Dolphin said it might be “a little bit of a reach” to say that the station should be moved because the streets around it had been flooded before, but the station had not, he said.

But he didn't rule such an argument out.

“It doesn't mean the regional administrator will buy it,” Dolphin said.