An investigation into FEMA claims after 2020's historic wildfires in Oregon and California reveals wide fluctuations in approval rates and denials of people who met aid criteria.

Transcript

NOEL KING, HOST:

When someone loses a home in a disaster, FEMA says it's there to help. More and more, though, when people apply for help, they are denied. A joint investigation by NPR and member station Jefferson Public Radio in southern Oregon looked closely at the wildfires last year in Oregon to understand why it's so hard to get approved. With me now are the reporters who worked on this story. Sean McMinn is an NPR data editor. And April Ehrlich is a reporter with Jefferson Public Radio. Hello to you both.

APRIL EHRLICH, BYLINE: Hey, good morning.

SEAN MCMINN, BYLINE: Noel.

KING: April, let me begin with you. Remind us what happened in southern Oregon last autumn.

EHRLICH: Yeah. So last year, over Labor Day weekend, there were these huge wildfires all over the West Coast, including one in southern Oregon called the Almeda Fire. It destroyed 2,600 homes and a few small towns, including the one I live in. Firefighters actually created a fire line on the street that I live on. So almost everything across the street from me is destroyed. But my house is fine. So that's actually what got me started on this project. I kept hearing from people saying that they were hitting roadblocks when they were trying to get disaster assistance from FEMA. I asked FEMA for more information. And I learned that they denied 70% of applicants in Oregon. So we started this project to really dig in to why that denial rate was so high.

KING: Seventy percent, in this case in Oregon. Sean, when you looked at that really large number of denials, what did you find behind it?

MCMINN: Yeah. So that 70% number is really interesting. Of course, it seems high. And if you look at the data compared to where we were about 15 years ago around Hurricane Katrina, it is. It seems more and more people are getting denied now even as wildfires get worse. But another thing to note is that that number does not include cases FEMA says were potentially fraudulent. Fraudulent applications made up almost half of those filed after the Oregon fires. What that meant was FEMA had to figure out how to weed out people who were trying to take advantage of the system. But what we found happened was those same measures they were using to weed people out were actually catching people who were real victims, who really lost their homes.

KING: And some of these people, April, you ended up speaking to.

EHRLICH: Yeah. And what I was hearing from them was that they were getting denied from the system that has become so complicated or they got inaccurate information from FEMA representatives on the ground, people like Jose Macias, who lost his home to the Almeda Fire.

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EHRLICH: I met Macias where his house was getting rebuilt in Phoenix, Ore., about 20 miles north of the California border. At that time, many of his neighbors were almost done rebuilding. Macias stood in front of an empty foundation and recalled the day that the fire struck his town.

JOSE MACIAS: You know, that's a really bad experience, you know, because I was in shock, like, for - I want to say, like, a month. Like, I couldn't believe it.

EHRLICH: Macias said he applied for FEMA assistance and was denied. But he didn't understand why. So he went to an emergency center to get help from FEMA representatives. The reps should have referred him to another agency for a loan. He says that didn't happen.

Do you think if you knew that you could take additional steps to potentially get assistance, would you have done it?

MACIAS: Yeah. Why not? Because anything can help.

EHRLICH: Macias didn't find out about the loan until it was too late to apply. He's now left paying out of pocket to rebuild his house little by little until he runs out of money. Sometimes people get tripped up because FEMA says they aren't who they say they are. Like Brenda Dairy and her husband, Francis Dairy. They were hit by the Beachie Creek Fire.

BRENDA DAIRY: We lost everything.

EHRLICH: They didn't get disaster assistance because FEMA couldn't verify her husband's identity. Brenda says she provided everything it asked for, including his Social Security card and his veteran ID card.

DAIRY: And they said, it's still not matching. It's not his Social Security number.

EHRLICH: FEMA runs personal information through an automated system. If, say, your name or your address is misspelled, it'll generate a letter that says you're ineligible for assistance. Brenda says they had no problem verifying her husband's Social Security number with a different federal agency to get a disaster loan. But she says FEMA's grant dollars could have helped with rent. Now the Dairys are just a few weeks away from moving back into their old home, which has been rebuilt to look exactly like it did before the fire, down to the same paint colors.

DAIRY: At first, I was kind of iffy about it because it would be like living on top of a graveyard because all of my stuff that I had was under there.

EHRLICH: FEMA's ID verification system can trip people up in lots of ways - for instance, if someone's name is mistranslated into English on public documents. Then there are times when people just don't have the documents FEMA's asking for.

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MARIA LADESMA GONZALEZ: (Speaking Spanish).

EHRLICH: Maria Ladesma Gonzalez and her 21-year-old daughter lost their mobile home to the Almeda Fire. Now they're renting two rooms in a friend's house.

GONZALEZ: (Non-English language spoken).

EHRLICH: Ladesma spoke to me through an interpreter. This fire hit hard in the area's Latino community, which has presented an additional challenge for someone like Ladesma, who primarily speaks Spanish. Ladesma says she asked FEMA to help with rent. She and her daughter are paying twice as much as they did before the fire.

GONZALEZ: (Through interpreter) I sent them papers and sent them papers and sent them more papers.

EHRLICH: She didn't have insurance, so Ladesma should have been eligible for help. Except FEMA won't help because she can't prove that she pays rent.

GONZALEZ: (Through interpreter) Because they want receipts for me paying the rent. But I don't pay the rent with a check. I pay the rent in cash. And they want receipts.

EHRLICH: After the fire, everything happened so fast. She got this place from a friend. She doesn't have a lease. She's found another place. But the rent is four times what she was paying before the fire.

GONZALEZ: (Through interpreter) It's a lot of money. And if they could help me to pay half the rent - they're asking for a lot of things. I don't have them.

EHRLICH: So Noel, what Ladesma is hoping for is that even though her new rent will be more expensive, she'll have a lease to give FEMA and get rental assistance.

KING: Sean, is there something about the way FEMA's application system is set up or designed that is causing so much confusion and leading to so many denials, in particular of people who seem to have really legitimate claims?

MCMINN: Yeah. There is a pattern to these kinds of things that trip people up, people who are in even slightly unconventional living situations - people like roommates, married couples who have different last names, people in trailer parks. We got documents from an internal FEMA survey. Over 1,000 people last year complained about communication with the agency or didn't know why they were denied or, in a couple of cases, were told they didn't live in the home that they've actually lived in almost their whole lives. But then, from FEMA's point of view, they can't trust everyone who says they're paying rent and can't prove it. We have, of course, been speaking to FEMA about all this. And last week, the administrator, Deanne Criswell, told Congress that she knows they have work to do to make aid easier to access.

EHRLICH: For us, the big takeaway is that the system is just not designed for real people. For example, the fire here in southern Oregon wiped out several mobile home parks. The people living there were elderly, or they didn't speak English as their primary language. This is a complicated system to navigate. And people are expected to get every little detail in their application right or face a denial and then a long road to try to undo that, which most of them just can't pull off.

KING: April, Sean, thanks for your reporting, guys. We appreciate it.

EHRLICH: Thanks.

MCMINN: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF THOSE WHO RIDE WITH GIANTS' "THE PASSAGE OF WONDER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.