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Sandy victims can still appeal payouts

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Victims of Hurricane Sandy who feel they have been underpaid for damage to their homes are eligible to re-open their flood insurance claims, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has announced.

Trip Fussell, an attorney with Weisbrod Matteis and Copley, met with a handful of residents at the Seaford United Methodist Church on Aug. 13, part of a series of local meetings to tell Sandy victims about their options. He encouraged them to take advantage of the opportunity to revisit their claims.

“It’s unprecedented what FEMA’s done here,” he said. He explained that proven claims of fraud — in the form of altered flood damage reports by insurance companies — are giving homeowners a second chance to get the money they are entitled to.

Any homeowners who did not receive the maximum insurance payout — $250,000 for the structure and $100,000 for contents — are entitled to have their claims revisited. Fussell said that any resident whose home was “substantially damaged” would likely be entitled to the full amounts.

A group of about 10 residents, mostly from Seaford and Massapequa, shared their stories with one another. They talked about the items they were and were not reimbursed for, their experiences with engineers and insurance adjustors, and their attempts to contact FEMA.

Once a homeowner calls FEMA and requests to have a claim re-opened, he or she is assigned to a desk auditor. Fussell said it is important that residents submit new evidence, otherwise the auditor will just use information in the existing file. And many of those files have proven to be false, he said.

Fussell urged residents to have new adjustments done on their homes. While much of the damage has been fixed in homes, he said that items such as receipts and photos serve as proof. A good insurance adjustor can file an accurate report even on a repaired home, he said.

He also told residents to go out and find an insurance adjustor, rather than using one provided by FEMA. “You saw what you got the first time a FEMA adjustor came out,” he said, noting that many spent only a few minutes at each home and filed incomplete reports.

Many residents did not get paid for items they were entitled too, such as sales taxes on building materials, and the cost of debris removal and electrical wiring replacement.

Robyn Stiffa, who lives in the Seaford Harbor neighborhood, had nine feet of water in her home after Sandy. She said the house was more than 50 percent damaged, but she only got $50,000.

Attending last week’s meeting was eye-opening, she said. “It was very helpful because there were a lot of things I didn’t know,” she said. “I am entitled to more money, I know that.”

Stiffa said she would be calling FEMA to have her case re-opened. She expressed her frustration with the agency, saying that over time she has had four different case workers, and she still struggles to get anyone who can help her on the phone.

While she has been able to make necessary repairs and move back into her home, she said there is damage that has never been fixed. Some of her windows and her garage door won’t open, and she was never able to replace kitchen cabinets. Additionally, she still needs to raise her home, which she wants to do in order to avoid higher flood insurance costs. Living between two canals and having suffered damage in both Irene and Sandy, she wants to avoid the same fate again.

Fussell noted that about 144,000 homeowners are entitled to have their claims reviewed by FEMA, and he encouraged residents to take advantage of that. “It behooves them to have as few people as possible re-open their claims,” he said. “You’re entitled to be made whole.”